I'd be lying if I didn't enjoy aspects of this book, but that was largely because of my interest in the subject matter. This is some serious stuff, and understanding these ancient mass extinctions is important for anyone with an interest in natural history.
But as too often happens with these popular science books (i.e. books on scientific subjects aimed at a general audience) there seems to be too much personal history, as if I was equally interested in the author's career and his travels as I was in learning about, you know, the Permo-Triassic mass extinction event.
The first third of the book outlines the history of geology, and particularly how geologists first came to define the Permian era, as well as what they thought about the events that led to its end. This section was actually fascinating, because while I've been aware of terms like "Permian" and "Triassic" for many years, I knew nothing about this aspect of the story.
But as Benton gets closer to the actual subject of the book, the focus blurs. On the one hand, a lot of time (too much time) is given over to such details, for instance, of taking a train across the Russian steppes in the 1990s, or what truckers do in China to keep their brakes from overheating on a steep road. While interesting in a way, it is also just so much padding.
What I'd rather read is an account on what we think happened 252 million years ago when an estimated 90% of the Earth's species vanished, and what the fossil record and other evidence tells us. Yes, this information is certainly present, but the organization of the material makes it a less engaging narrative than that initial history lesson. Towards the end, the book became a slog.
And I'll be completely honest: I deducted a star from my rating because of the final chapter, which veers off-topic and injects politics and opinion into a book of science. In case anyone had any doubts, the reader gets an earful of what the author thinks of "political conservatives" (his words). For many readers, Benton is preaching the Gospel, but for the rest he is nearly accusing them of ignorance. Because, of course, data leads to only a single conclusion and leaves no room for dissent.
For someone like me, who just wants to learn the facts so that I may ask my own educated questions, this blatant attempt at proselytizing turned me off. This soap box speech was as much opinion as fact, and by doing so Benton exposes as many biases as the nineteenth-century geologists he wrote about earlier, who refused to accept the idea of "mass extinctions" caused by "catastrophic events" simply because they found the ideas distasteful -- i.e. their emotional responses interfered with their abilities to see what their fossils were telling them.
And so I found that ending this book with a chapter based on an emotional response to current events to be an ironic lack of self-awareness. I agree with much of what Benton is stating or implying -- specifically, the need to preserve biodiversity by preserving wilderness -- but with all the mention of researchers venturing into the jungle to estimate what is being lost as habitats are lost, my first thought was to wonder who is venturing into cities to document any new species that might be evolving to live in urban environments, such as the Eastern Coyote? Because that would seem to be the type of question a good skeptic would ask -- you know, to get all of the information in an objective attempt to learn the truth, and not simply use science to prop up what you want to believe and ridicule the people with whom you disagree.
This final chapter, which at 13 pages is the shortest in the entire book, undermined a lot of the preceding chapters for me. Benton is guilty of exactly the same faults that he ascribes to Charles Lyell in the earlier chapters, who without basis bullied his contemporaries into disavowing any notion that the Earth had ever witnessed a catastrophic event. So by expressing my own doubts about Benton's opinions, does this make me a "political conservative" in his mind? Is the purpose of science the achievement of monolithism in thought?
Ditch that last chapter, cut out the train rides, and better organize the material to focus on what we know and how we know it. That's my recommendation for taking a good book written by someone who clearly knows his stuff, and making it the thought-provoking page-turner this really ought to be.
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Well written and informative. Good balance between background story and facts.
Reviewed in the United States on July 14, 2022
Well written and balanced between background story and facts. I haven't finished it yet but great so far.
Reviewed in the United States on July 14, 2022
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Yasmin Foster
The most up-to-date (that I know of) book concerning the Permian Extinction...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on April 30, 2020
Matthew Culley
An excellent popular science book on paleoecology
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 20, 2020minoru
Great Book and an excellent explanation of a disastrous event in Earth's History.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 26, 2019
Mr. A. PRYCE
Fascinating story.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 12, 2022
