To read Elizabeth Kolbert before bed is a mistake. Her Pulitzer Prize winning work, The Sixth Extinction, will make you rethink what it means to be a human, and consider your place and impact on the world. The New Yorker Staff Writer’s latest book, Under a White Sky, is just as compelling, if not more so. I had the pleasure of talking with her recently about her new book, which traces a plethora of mistakes we as a society have made — the introduction of invasive species into fragile ecosystems, for one — and our often ill-planned solutions to them, solutions that more often than not, appear to have made things worse. “Our track record isn’t very good,” she told me.
Under a White Sky
A lot of books about environmental destruction, I find, both gripping and distressing—at times it can feel as if there is no solution to these grand problems. And yet, Kolbert said, “it’s important to acknowledge and be aware of these issues.” She told me “You can’t solve these problems without confronting what is happening. Even if there is no grand solution, there are certainly better or worse things to do, that’s especially clear.” Kolbert recommended five books on Environmental Destruction, or as she called it “A bedtime reading list for people who don’t want to go to sleep.”
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