Book Spotlight: The Sixth Extinction

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
by Elizabeth Kolbert

Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass extinctions. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. Except this time around, the culprit is not an asteroid, it is us.

In The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert draws on the work of scores of researchers in half a dozen disciplines, accompanying many of them into the field: geologists who study deep ocean cores, botanists who follow the tree line as it climbs up the Andes, marine biologists who dive off the Great Barrier Reef. She introduces us to a dozen species, some already gone, others facing extinction, including the Panamian golden frog, staghorn coral, the great auk, and the Sumatran rhino.

Through these stories, Kolbert provides a moving account of the disappearances occurring all around us and traces the evolution of extinction as concept, from its first articulation by Georges Cuvier in revolutionary Paris up through the present day. The sixth extinction is likely to be mankind's most lasting legacy; as Kolbert observes, it compels us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human. A powerful account of the mass extinction unfolding before our eyes. 
 

Tyson

Book Spotlight: Astoria

Coming this March a true life adventure.

Astoria: Astor and Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire
A Story of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival
     by Peter Stark

In the tradition of The Lost City of Z, Astoria is the thrilling true adventure tale of the now forgotten 1810 Astor Expedition.At a time when the edge of American settlement barely reached beyond the Appalachian Mountains, two visionaries, President Thomas Jefferson and millionaire John Jacob Astor, foresaw that one day the Pacific would dominate world trade as much as the Atlantic did in their day.Astoria is the harrowing tale of the quest to settle a Jamestown-like colony on the Pacific coast. Astor set out to establish a global trade network based at the mouth of the Columbia River in what is now Oregon.He dispatched two groups of men west: one by sea around the southern tip of South America and one by land over the Rockies.Unfolding from 1810 to 1813, Astoria is a tale of high adventure and incredible hardship, drawing extensively on firsthand accounts of those who made the journey.

Tyson

Popular True Crime

The following are 5 of the most popular True Crime reads at the Wellesley Free Library.

 

A Murder in Wellesley: The Inside Story of an Ivy-League Doctor's Double Life, His Slain Wife, and the Trial That Gripped the Nation
     by Tom Farmer, Marty Foley

A Murder in Wellesley takes the reader far beyond the headlines and national news coverage and tells the untold story of the meticulous investigation led by Marty Foley, the lead State Police detective on the case, from the morning of the murder through Dirk Greineder's ultimate conviction. 

Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China
     by Paul French 

This true-crime thriller presents readers with a rare and unique portrait of the last days of colonial Peking.  The mutilated body of Pamela Werner was found at the base of the Fox Tower, which, according to local superstition, is home to the maliciously seductive fox spirits. As British detective Dennis and Chinese detective Han investigate, the mystery only deepens and, in a city on the verge of invasion, rumor and superstition run rampant. 

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the
Fair That Changed America
     by Erik Larson

Devil in the White City is the story of the master builder, the killer, and the great fair that obsessed them both. This rich narrative draws the reader into a time of magic and majesty, made all the more appealing by a supporting cast of real-life characters, including Buffalo Bill, Theodore Dreiser, Susan B. Anthony, Thomas Edison, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and others. In this book the smoke, romance, and mystery of the Gilded Age come alive as never before. 

 

Most Wanted: Pursuing Whitey Bulger, the Murderous Mob Chief the FBI Secretly Protected
     by Thomas J. Foley, John Sedgwick 

 In this book, Foley, a cop s cop, honestly recounts how his wide-eyed admiration for the nation s top law enforcement agency was gradually transformed by dark realities he didn’t’ want to believe. His investigative efforts resulted in criminal convictions of a half-dozen of Boston s most notorious thugs and also led to the conviction of John Connolly, one of the FBI agents who abetted Bulger; Connolly is now serving a forty-year prison sentence.

Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery
     by Robert Kolker

One late spring evening in 2010, Shannan Gilbert went missing. No one who had heard of her disappearance thought much about what had happened to the twenty-four-year-old, a Craigslist prostitute. Until seven months later, when an unexpected discovery in a bramble alongside a nearby highway turned up four bodies, all evenly spaced, all wrapped in burlap. Like Shannan, all four women were petite and in their twenties, they all came from out of town to work as escorts, and they all advertised on Craigslist and its competitor, Backpage. Lost Girls is a portrait not just of five women, but of unsolved murder in an idyllic part of America, of the underside of the Internet, and of the secrets we keep without admitting to ourselves that we keep them.

Tyson