Humans are a force of nature like no other animal on the planet. For thousands of years, we have radically altered the destiny of other species. Today, we do so at such an accelerating rate that it is widely proposed that we live on the brink of a Sixth Extinction, comparable to the most destructive moments in the fossil record. The Last Animal provides the first historical account of humanity鈥檚 impact on animal biodiversity, taking readers from the megafaunal extinctions of the Ice Age to the planetwide perils of the present.
In a masterful blend of global history with the latest discoveries in ecology, evolution, and Earth system science, Kyle Harper casts the Sixth Extinction in a new light. He meticulously documents the long history of human-driven biodiversity loss, insisting that both species extinctions and ecosystem simplification are essential to measuring humanity鈥檚 impact, which is more profound than recognized. The Last Animal reenvisions the human story by highlighting a wondrous range of extinct creatures and the webs of life they inhabited. Set against a backdrop of migrations and empires, wars and revolutions, and the inexorable march of technological progress, Harper鈥檚 epic narrative demonstrates how our ability to manipulate nature is a fundamental yet increasingly dangerous element of our success.
Putting the grand sweep of world history into geological perspective, Harper argues that the long view is essential to confronting the urgent challenges we face. A startling account of how much biodiversity has already been lost, The Last Animal is also a poignant call to protect what remains.
Kyle Harper is the G. T. and Libby Blankenship Chair in the History of Liberty at the University of Oklahoma and Fractal Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. His previous works include Plagues upon the Earth and The Fate of Rome (both 快色直播).
“Kyle Harper’s intertwining of human and animal histories, illustrated with so many revealing episodes, is a tremendous accomplishment. It is hard to overstate the cumulative power of the story that unfolds across the book. This is a history that we desperately need to grasp and begin to change.”—Sean B. Carroll, author of The Serengeti Rules: The Quest to Discover How Life Works and Why It Matters
“Filled with fascinating detail, this book provides a sense of how one species—ours—has shifted the destiny of so many others simply by our (in so many ways extravagant) existence. On the edge of the climate change era, it positions our possibilities and our peril.”—Bill McKibben, author of Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization
“The Last Animal gives us the long view that conservation urgently needs. Harper traces how human history became ecological history, transforming animals, landscapes, and seascapes, and the systems that sustain life. Brilliantly synthetic and deeply thoughtful, this book reminds us that biodiversity is not a backdrop to human progress; it is the living foundation of our own future.”—Becky Chaplin-Kramer, global biodiversity lead scientist, World Wildlife Fund
“Illuminating and sharply written, Harper’s book blends natural science with history in ways that very few historians and fewer natural scientists are able to do.”—J. R. McNeill, author of Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Modern World
“The Last Animal is utterly dazzling. It is the mark of a great historian to render the full complexity of the past without reducing it to a simple parable of good guys versus bad guys. Harper’s talent for both appreciation and analysis lifts this book above the indignant tenor of much of today’s debates about the environmental crisis and its myriad causes. He shows that there is something beautiful and benign as well as brutal in us.”—Julia Adeney Thomas, coauthor of The Anthropocene: A Multidisciplinary Approach
“Big history at its best, The Last Animal dissects our collision with the biodiversity of the natural world from the Pleistocene to today. With beautiful writing and vivid descriptions, Kyle Harper has given us a rich mix of biology, anthropology, and history, uncovering forgotten characters and poorly known avenues in this captivating story of our history en route to our modern world. The book to read on the Anthropocene.”—Douglas H. Erwin, curator of paleozoic invertebrates, National Museum of Natural History
