"Over the last half-billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. Adapting from her New York Times-bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning adult nonfiction, Elizabeth Kolbert explores the Anthropocene...

Is there a more terrifying example than the Door to Hell in Turkmenistan of the negative impact of people on Earth? But there are many, many more. This and several other frightening examples serve as prime and telling true stories in this book. Each spread has a fact box illuminating legal changes made and not made as a response to the disaster, and a statistics sidebar that reinforces the immense impact of each disaster through numbers. The book...

"The biggest oil spill in U.S. history polluted the pristine waters of Alaska decades ago and killed thousands of birds, mammals, and fish. It still haunts the people who are living with its aftermath. On Good Friday 1989, the huge oil tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound, spilling millions of crude oil into the water -- oil that would eventually cover more than 1,000 miles of shoreline. Cleanup began immediately but there is still...