extinctions philanthropy jeffersonian biogeography

books:

Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience 1875-1928

8 reviews
David Wallace Adams

University Press of Kansas, 1997

Groundbreaking book on the education of Native Americans
This book was recommended to me by my academic advisor, as it is considered an important and influential treatise on the subject of Native American education. David Wallace Adams, in his groundbreaking book, "Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928," shows how the case for education was made. First, Euro-Americans believed that the older generation ...

Vanishing Voices: The Extinction of the World's Languages

10 reviews
Daniel Nettle, Suzanne Romaine

Oxford University Press, USA, 2002

important subject, worthy book
This is an outstanding book. Nettle & Romaine have produced a serious, well-reasoned analysis of linguistic depletion. They ground their analysis with historical surveys covering the origins of human language as well as the effect on languages of colonialism all over the world. I haven't written an amazon review before, but I think some of the previous reviewers do this book a disservice. N&R ...

Extinction: How Life on Earth Nearly Ended 250 Million Years Ago

12 reviews
Douglas H. Erwin

Princeton University Press, 2008

Splendid agnosticism
In Kentucky, there's a museum with a lifesize model of a dinosaur with a saddle on it. This is a hymn in fiberglass to young Earth creationism, the idea that the Universe was created about 6,000 years ago. It costs $1,500 to become a charter member (family rate) of this museum. A much better investment would be $24.95 for Douglas Erwin's thriller about the Permian extinction. More than ...

The Evolution and Extinction of the Dinosaurs

12 reviews
David B. Weishampel

Cambridge University Press, 2005

Clades of the past
"Dinosaur!" The word still makes children's faces bright with excitement. "Can we go to the museum, Dad?" - and a golf game is set aside. The authors note how pervasive the dinosaur has become in our society. We live in "dinosaur-crazy times with documentaries, colouring books and films - "we have thrice feasted on Jurassic Park movies". The authors feel this familiarity is all to the good - ...

When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time

17 reviews
Michael Benton

Thames & Hudson, 2005

A Masterpiece
The best book yet written on the Permian extinction, "When Life Nearly Died" explores all of the possible mechanisms, and then provides the only quantifiable theory ever put forward. Benton's description and data on a rapid global warming followed by an enormous polar methane release of multi-billion tonnage is actually supported by some math that looks sound. The meteor theory of the ...

Extinction: Bad Genes or Bad Luck?

12 reviews
David M. Raup

W. W. Norton & Company, 1992

reviewed by Victor Niederhoffer (Daily [...])
This book by David M. Raup, a biologist at the University of Chicago, of the Stephen Jay Gould genre, identifies everything about extinction that we thought was true but is not. The author's main thesis is that extinction is a mostly random event; due to catastrophes and bad luck, and not related to the process of evolution that is part and parcel of the Darwinian idea. The author believes that ...

Mass Extinctions and Their Aftermath

5 reviews
A. Hallam, P. B. Wignall

Oxford University Press, USA, 1997

A Good Overview of Mass Extinctions
'Mass Extinctions and Their Aftermath' by A. Hallam and P. B. Wignall is a good overview of the episodes of mass extinctions in the history of life. Beginning with a brief primer on the 'anatomy' and significance of mass extinctions, the book covers both major and minor mass extinction events chronologically and succintly, with plenty of references. It summarizes the plausible cause (or ...

Resident Evil: Extinction (Resident Evil)

8 reviews
Keith R. A. DeCandido

Pocket Star, 2007

Resident Evil: Extinction
I loved this book! i dont know about everybody else but this is just what they needed. This books is going by how Resident Evil : Code Veronica X and Resident Evil 4 and 5 play along. Cause they are going to have the super zombies that run instead of walk. Its in a desert like area like in RE 5. This movie is just going to be the best out of all the 3 Resident Evil Movies. Sure the writer did ...

The Sixth Extinction: Patterns of Life and the Future of Humankind

19 reviews
Richard E. Leakey

Anchor, 1996

This book pwns joo
The Sixth Extinction provides an in-depth investigation into our history, present, and future. Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin use more than enough detail to present a very convincing theory; compiling data from our arhaeoligical past and present ecological role within our planet to give every reader a sense of urgency to do something to save ourselves and other species from a dark future. Humans ...

The Mistaken Extinction & CD-Rom: Dinosaur Evolution and the Origin of Birds (Academic Version)

8 reviews
Lowell Dingus, Timothy Rowe

W. H. Freeman, 1998

The Mistaken Extinction: Dinosaur Evolution-Origin of Birds
The Mistaken Extinction: Dinosaur Evolution and the Origin of Birds written by Lowell Dingus and Timothy Rowe is a dinosaur book that makes a difference. This is a frank account of how we know what we know about the dinosaurs and how the work can and should be approached. There are issues surrounding a dinosaur extinction as though they are elements in a scientific detective story; following a ...

When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World's Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge

5 reviews
K David Harrison

Oxford University Press, USA, 2008

"Sticky" Knowledge
Several people have written about so-called "language death" (David Crystal and Mark Abley have written books on the stubject). But K. David Harrison's book When Languages Die shows what it really means when a language "dies." First of all, Harrison makes it clear the death metaphor isn't perfect. Languages aren't people; they can't die. Instead "language shift - - the process by which ...

Seeds of Extinction: Jeffersonian Philanthropy and the American Indian (Norton Library)

1 review
Bernard, W. Sheehan

W. W. Norton & Company, 1974

Sheehan is wrong, but he can write well.
The idea that the U.S. did not mean to or even seek to take Indian land is prepostorous. It is obvious in looking at The Trail of Tears that all along the U.S. Gov't wanted to take land, no matter how civilized a society the Cherokees became.

Going, Going, Gone?: Animals on the Brink of Extinction and How to Turn the Tide

2 reviews

Think Books, 2006

A Beautiful Book on a Terribly Sad Subject!
This book, which deals with endangered species and habitats worldwise, is at once marvelous to view yet saddening. Paging through the gorgeous photographs of cheetahs, Siberian cranes, monarch butterflies, woolly monkeys, corncockles and sumatran rhinos, it's disheartening to read that so many precious species are in danger of extinction. Conversely it cheers the soul to read of the various ...

Fighting for Love in the Century of Extinction: How Passion and Politics Can Stop Global Warming
Eban Goodstein

Vermont, 2007

The central idea in Fighting for Love in the Century of Extinction is simple: Unchecked, global warming threatens to destroy one of every two animals, birds, plants, reptiles, forests, fish and other creatures alive today on the earth. This looming ecological collapse will only be arrested if we can articulate and embrace what the natural world means to each of us, and then fight a series of hard political battles to preserve creation. On a ...

Why Most Things Fail: Evolution, Extinction and Economics

15 reviews
Paul Ormerod

Wiley, 2007

Why the subject of economics is in disequilibrium.
This book is the follow up to the excellent Butterfly Economics. As I write this review, a leading conservative commentator on a television show broadcast by the Fox News Channel, was stating that the US economy was doing very well. This statement seemed to me to be at odds with the reality as I observe it with For Sale signs springing up almost daily like mushrooms, the lower middle classes ...

The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction

65 reviews
David Quammen

Scribner, 1997

Plotting the roadmap to species extinction
"Islands are where species go to die." - David Quammen, author of THE SONG OF THE DODO This book is all about the birth, maturation, and real world applications of the science of island biogeography as it relates to the circumstances of species isolation and diversification and subsequent decline and extinction. Here, "island" means not only the obvious - a bit of land surrounded by water - ...

Catastrophes and Lesser Calamities: The Causes of Mass Extinctions

8 reviews
Tony Hallam

Oxford University Press, USA, 2005

Another Nail in the Coffin of Simplicity and Uniformitarianism
I guess this is a tough little book for some. Certainly other reviewers have said so. It's not mere armchair science or Discovery Channel drama. Rather it's a lucid and well supported statement of an hypothesis, that the five great extinction events at the ends of the Ordovician, Permian, Triassic, Cretaceous and Devonian epochs did not all have the same cause, nor did they all occur in the same ...

Swan Song: Poems of Extinction (Aspca Henry Bergh Children's Book Awards (Awards)) (Aspca Henry Bergh ...

1 review
J. Patrick Lewis

Creative Editions, 2003

Tragic, beautiful, plaintive
Witty, smart, sad, these poems give respect to each of the species they speak of. The dodo, the elephant bird, Stellar's Sea Cow, the Blue Buck (huh?!), each one briefly describes the extinct animal. But the poems aren't goopy or even too sad; they capture the line of reality in all its tragedy. Here's a sample from "The Blue Buck": Blue beauty was a burden - in A country coated tan - For ...

Extinction

10 reviews
Thomas Bernhard

Knopf, 1995

A joyous read and a great work
There is great joy to be had from this wonderful book. Its first joy is its prose - sparkling in its clarity, musical, effortless - which carries one along on a journey through the thoughts and feelings of Viennese 48 year old Franz-Joseph Murau. Intellectual resident of Rome, alienated by choice from his Austrian family, friend to Archbishop Spadolini(who is also his mother's lover!), he ...

Endangered: Wildlife on the Brink of Extinction

1 review
George C. McGavin

Firefly Books, 2006

ENDANGERED is more than a simple rehash of extinction theory
ENDANGERED: WILDLIFE ON THE BRINK OF EXTINCTION by George C. McGaven is the kind of book which has dual appeal: to public libraries seeking an eye-catching overview for general-interest patrons, and to high school and college-level libraries interested in debating the progress and effects of extinction. McGavin is the Acting Curator of Entomology at Oxford University's Museum of Natural History ...

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