Under a White Sky

A terrific look at humanity's impact on the Earth (praise for: The Sixth Extinction)

Bill Gates

A wonderful book (praise for: The Sixth Extinction)

Barack Obama

This is the big story of our age (praise for: The Sixth Extinction)

Sunday Times

Well-composed snapshots of history, theory and observation that will fascinate, enlighten and appal many readers (praise for: The Sixth Extinction)

Guardian

A distinctive and eloquent voice of conscience... timely, meticulously researched and well-written (praise for: The Sixth Extinction)

Al Gore, New York Times

Compelling (praise for: The Sixth Extinction)

Observer

Remarkable (praise for: The Sixth Extinction)

Sunday Telegraph

Read this book (praise for: The Sixth Extinction)

Independent

Elizabeth Kolbert's cautionary tale, The Sixth Extinction, offers us a cogent overview of a harrowing biological challenge. The reporting is exceptional, the contextualizing exemplary (praise for: The Sixth Extinction)

Barry Lopez, author of Arctic Dreams and Horizon

The Sixth Mass Extinction is the biggest story on Earth, period, and Elizabeth Kolbert tells it with imagination, rigor, deep reporting, and a capacious curiosity about all the wondrous creatures and ecosystems that exist, or have existed, on our planet. The result is an important book full of love and loss (praise for: The Sixth Extinction)

David Quammen, author of The Song of the Dodo and Spillover

A master elucidator, Kolbert is gratifyingly direct as she assesses our predicament between a rock and a hard place, creating a clarion and invaluable 'book about people trying to solve problems created by people trying to solve problems

Booklist

Every paragraph of Kolbert's books has a mountain of reading and reporting behind it.... Urgent, absolutely necessary reading as a portrait of our devastated planet

Kirkus Review

Brilliantly executed and urgently necessary

Publishers Weekly

Our finest journalist on climate change

Chicago Tribune

This intimate natural history is both a sober assessment of the ecosystems we have harmed and an exciting description of some of the discoveries that could help undo that damage

Scientific American

A tale not of magic-bullet remedies where maybe this time things will be different when we intervene in nature, but rather of deploying a panoply of strategies big and small in hopes that there is still time to make a difference and atone for our past. A sobering and realistic look at humankind's perhaps misplaced faith that technology can work with nature to produce a more liveable planet

Library Journal

Kolbert's prose is peppered with...mordant observations, which bring out the humanity (or animality) in her subjects

Ben Cooke, The Times

Riveting... inspiring... the premier chronicler of humanity's thoughtless destruction of our habitat

Washington Post

One of the great science journalists, Kolbert has for many years been an essential voice, a reporter from the front lines of the environmental crisis... Important, necessary, urgent and phenomenally interesting... Beautifully and insistently, Kolbert shows us that it is time to think radically about the ways we manage the environment; time to work with what we have, using the knowledge we have, with our eyes fully open to the realities of where we are

HELEN MACDONALD, New York Times

Under a White Sky... exhibits Kolbert's sculptor-like skill for making climate change feel tangible, happening before our eyes and beneath our fingers

Matt Reynolds, Wired

A meticulously researched and deftly crafted work of journalism that explores some of the biggest challenges of our age

Jonathan Watts, Guardian

Skilful and subtle

Ben Ehrenreich, Guardian

Fascinating

Chris Fitch, Geographical

To be a well-informed citizen of Planet Earth, you need to read Elizabeth Kolbert. . . . It's a tribute to Kolbert's skills as a storyteller that she transforms the quest to deal with the climate crisis into a darkly comic tale of human hubris and imagination that could either end in flames or in a new vision of Paradise

Jeff Goodell, Rolling Stone

A superb and honest reflection of our extraordinary time

Nature

In Under a White Sky...Elizabeth Kolbert...[combines] curiosity with an acerbic wit to explore humanity's obsession with controlling nature... Kolbert's skill is in presenting compelling stories from the Anthropocene and letting us judge for ourselves

James Dacey, Physics World

Smart

Bill Gates

Important, necessary, urgent and phenomenally interesting

Helen Macdonald, New York Times

Riveting

Washington Post

A meticulously researched and deftly crafted work of journalism that explores some of the biggest challenges of our age

Guardian

A superb and honest reflection of our extraordinary time

Nature