The Last Animal: Human History and the Fate of Life on Earth from the Ice Age to the Sixth Extinction

From the acclaimed author of The Fate of Rome and Plagues upon the Earth, a monumental history of the world that lays bare the devastating human toll on animal lifeHumans are a force of nature like no other animal on the planet.For thousands of years, we have radically altered the destiny of other species.Today, we do so at such an accelerating rate that it is widely proposed that we live on the brink of a Sixth Extinction, comparable to the most destructive moments in the fossil record.The Last Animal provides the first historical account of humanity’s impact on animal biodiversity, taking readers from the megafaunal extinctions of the Ice Age to the planetwide perils of the present. In a masterful blend of global history with the latest discoveries in ecology, evolution, and Earth system science, Kyle Harper casts the Sixth Extinction in a new light.He meticulously documents the long history of human-driven biodiversity loss, insisting that both species extinctions and ecosystem simp