I wasn't aware, until I read this, that it was cobbled together from a lot of articles from Kolbert's work as a journalist. Although "cobbled" sounds pretty condescending - all that previous work is woven together so seamlessly that I felt I was reading something that had been written of a piece, as it were. The writing skill it takes to achieve that effect is incredible. If only my own nonfiction was this good!

The writing's not the most interesting thing here, though. It's the overall effect. This is a collection of case studies that together give an impression more compelling, I think, than a more cohesive and typically interwoven factual narrative. All those species, dying out. It's terrible but it's also fascinating - not only for the ecological gaps they leave behind, but for how we as humans respond to those gaps. And how the science of that extinction, the nuts and bolts of this creeping death, is carried out. A biologist myself, there's this dual response: the science is so interesting, and I want to know more... but to know more is to engage with this ongoing biological apocalypse, to revel in it almost, because the interest is so all-consuming, so horribly and creatively entertaining, that there's almost a guilt in enjoying that science in the first place.