The Sixth Extinction -- Elizabeth Kolbert

[IsaacNewton]

If you haven't read this book go get it today. By Elizabeth Kolbert it won the Pulitzer Prize and is exceptionally good, well written, and easy to read. It covers some detailed singular biology, geology, and other science, but is written in a very easy flowing way. This woman is a writer first of all and this book just reads like a good book.

There have been five major mass extinctions on Earth. This book puts forth the Sixth which is underway. It is written in a very human way though, there is nothing stodgy or stoic about it. it covers a number of events taking place in various parts of the world.

This book should be required reading for all high school seniors.

 

[Luddly Neddite]

Thanks very much for this.

The book is on my nightstand and next in the queue.

 

[IsaacNewton]

Thanks very much for this.

The book is on my nightstand and next in the queue.

Glad to hear it. It's very good. I just bought To Kill A Mockingbird. Way past due for reading this.

And there was a documentary on Margaret Mitchell who wrote Gone With The Wind. What a story. She started writing it in 1926, finished about 3 years later, and the manuscript just sat around her apartment in disarray until about 1934-35. She was using some of it under the leg of a table to prop it up. She didn't think it was any good, she had never published anything else, and had only written a few short stories on her own as a hobby.

An editor from McMillian Press was looking for new writers and people in town knew Mitchell 'liked stories' so they said he should talk to her. She refused to give the manuscript to the editor, thinking she was not a good writer, and he then started leaving. Story goes some of the town's women were there and said "oh, you can't write, you don't know how to write". She stormed home, gathered up all the pages and piles of pages and gave them to the editor. He had to buy a large suitcase to carry it all. He then left on a train.

She changed her mind and sent a telegram for the editor to return the manuscript, she didn't want to publish it. The editor had read some of it already and he didn't send it back. Instead McMillan had her rewrite some of it and they published it in June of 1936. By 1938 it had sold 1 million copies and had won the Pullitzer Prize in 1937. It was gigantic, something like the original Star Wars in 1977.

That was the only book she wrote. One book. It was made into the movie in 1939 and the rest is history. She got the idea from her childhood. She was born in 1900 and at about 8 years old her mother was taking her to school in a buggy and they were passing all these burned out mansions along the way that had been destroyed in the Civil War during Sherman's march to the sea.