| THE SIXTH EXTINCTION An Unnatural History Elizabeth Kolbert New York: Picador, January 2015 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-1-250-06218-5 | ||||
| ISBN-10 1-250-06218-7 | 319pp. | SC/BWI | $16.00 | |
| Page 3: | "When it is still too early to say whether it will reach the proportions of the Big Five, it becomes known as the Sixth Extinction." |
| Word choice: S/B "When". |
| Page 30: | "Pascal Tassy is a director at the museum who specializes proboscideans, the group that includes elephants and their lost cousins—mammoths, mastodons, and gomphotheres, to name just a few." |
| Capitalization: S/B "the Academy" since this refers to the National Academy of Sciences. |
| Page 50: | "Robert FitzRoy..." |
| Capitalization: S/B "Fitzroy". |
| Page 56: | "...who had come to Iceland expressly to acquire an auk for his collection (and had nearly drowned in the attempt)." |
| Punctuation order: S/B "(and had nearly drowned in the attempt.)" per the AP Style Guide. |
| Page 63: | "...a French explorer, Jean-Baptiste Charcot, who died when his ship, the infelicitously named Pourquoi-Pas, sunk off Sandgerđi in 1936." |
| Verb tense: S/B "sank". |
| Page 72: | "...what's sometimes called the 'plate tectonics revolution' was sweeping through the profession, and just about everyone at Lamont got swept up in it." |
| Terminology: S/B "Lamont-Doherty". |
| Page 77: | "Curiously enough, the Times' editorial board decided to weigh in on the matter." |
| It's unclear which newspaper this is. On page 102, the answer is revealed: it's the New York Times. |
| Page 139: | "Among the fish I think I may have spotted were somber sweetlips [...] deceiver fangblenny..." |
| Whet — no sarcastic fringehead? |
| Page 161: | "...snow begins to build up there. This initiates a feedback cycle that causes atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to drop." |
| I don't see how this could work. |
| Pages 176-77: | "Tundra is crisscrossed by pipelines, boreal forest by seismic lines." |
| What are seismic lines? |
| Page 232: | "What remained were huge middens of moa bones, as well as the ruins of large outdoor ovens—leftovers of great, big bird barbecues." |
| Whether these barbecues were "great" — i.e. enjoyable — cannot be known. Unneeded comma: S/B "great big bird barbecues". |
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