‘Sixth Extinction’ Author Elizabeth Kolbert Visits Lafayette
Elizabeth Kolbert, staff writer for The New Yorker and award-winning author of The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, will deliver Lafayette College’s annual Thomas Roy and Lura Forrest Jones Visiting Lecture at 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 5 in Colton Chapel. A book signing will follow. The talk is free and open to the public.
Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass extinctions—times when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the eradication of the dinosaurs. This time we are the cataclysm, says Kolbert.
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Kolbert’s latest work, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (2014), blends intellectual and natural history and field reporting into a powerful account of mass extinction unfolding before our eyes. She draws on the works of researchers in half a dozen disciplines, accompanying many into the field.
The book was named one of the 10 best books in 2014 by editors of the New York Times Book Review and recently announced as a finalist for the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award for general nonfiction. It was the selected summer reading for Lafayette’s incoming Class of 2018.
Elizabeth Kolbert has been with The New Yorker since 1999; before that, she was a reporter and columnist for The New York Times. Stories for the magazine have included political profiles, book reviews, commentaries, and extensive writing on climate change. Her three-part series on global warming, “The Climate of Man (2005),” won the 2006 National Magazine Award for Public Interest, the 2005 American Association for the Advancement of Science Journalism Award, and the National Academies Communications Award. Field Notes from a Catastrophe (2006) expanded the topic and was named one of the 100 notable books of the year by The New York Times. Kolbert is the recipient of a Heinz Award (2010) for work in environmental journalism and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2010).
The Thomas Roy and Lura Forrest Jones Visiting Lecture Series at Lafayette was founded by Trustee Emeritus Thomas Roy Jones in 1973 to provide students with the opportunity to hear presentations and interact each year with individuals of exemplary accomplishment in the academic world or in public life.
Past speakers have included Jane Goodall and Stephen Sondheim.
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Photo credit: Nicholas Whitman
Higher resolution image available, https://flic.kr/p/q1xJpE
Attention Media: If interested in covering the event, contact Kristine Todaro in advance for media guidelines.
Kristine Y. Todaro
Director of Special Projects & Media Relations
Communications Div.
Lafayette College
Easton, Pa. 18042
(610) 330-5119
LafColnews@lafayette.edu
www.lafayette.edu