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ERWIN, D. H. 2006. Extinction. How Life on Earth Nearly Ended 250 Million Years Ago.

ix + 296 pp. Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press. Price US $24.95 (hard covers). ISBN 0 691 00524 9.

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

This book is pitched at an educated general readership and is written in an autobiographical first-person memoir style. Erwin conveys a powerful sense of story for this great whodunit mystery and lay readers will find it a good read. I did however find the level of self-aggrandisement in the book a little hard to swallow and there are several specific denigrating personal comments that I am surprised the editor allowed. Erwin also denigrates scientific rigour to ‘technical trivia’ (p. 264) where he also suggests that most geologists would find this rigour too pedantic.

However, Chapter 2 is an excellent introduction to possible causes for the end-Permian mass extinction and invites the reader to make up his own mind after reading all the arguments. Chapter 3 held great promise and interest. . . . [Full Text of this Article]