After They're Gone

Reviews

Wise, challenging and offering some unexpected laughter in the dark, this is a rational and insightful account of the sixth great extinction event that we are all creating. It also contains the best succinct summary of the conservation movement in Britain that I've ever read. Peter Marren is a brilliant writer and a national treasure. After They're Gone tackles one of the huge, uncomfortable but absolutely necessary and unavoidable themes of our times. In his characteristic style Peter Marren has humanised the story of wildlife losses with humour and wit but also with his enormous knowledge and deep love for the living world. Surely one of the best written books about the current extinction crisis in animals, plants and fungi, by one who has spent a lifetime working in the conservation of the organisms he loves. Marren's tour through British wildlife in particular combines common sense and clarity of vision with a poignant sense of loss for the richness of the past. Important and thought-provoking Essential reading: Marren makes a page-turner out of Armageddon. A characteristically thoughtful, fascinating and very timely book on the process of extinction - and why it matters not just for the future of the natural world, but for us all. From the Xerces blue to the Labrador duck, from the giant earwig to the golden frog, Peter Marren offers us in After They've Gone a litany of wildlife loss across the world as distressing as it is gripping; and his account of the extinction of the baiji, the legendary Chinese river dolphin, will break your heart His humour keeps the reader from despairing while his love of the natural world is an inspiration to help where we can Expand reviews