Vanished: An Unnatural History of Extinction

“It looks at the idea of extinction, which we take for granted now, and at a time when extinction was first becoming something that people talked about—in the post-Darwinian age, when we realised that there were life forms on Earth that weren’t with us any more, and the discovery—although I hate the word discovery—of bones that didn’t match anything on Earth that they knew. Those findings were revelations that made people rethink their relationship with the environment. She documents this in a compelling and very compassionate way. She also writes about its coincidence with the colonial project by European powers, and how this new paradigm of extinction, the idea of extinction, in a way made it okay for colonial powers to exterminate groups of people unlike them.” Read more...

The Best Popular Science Books of 2025: The Royal Society Book Prize

Sandra Knapp, Biologist