* Violent Nature, Resilient Life * Storm over the Amazon * Krakatau * The Great Extinctions * Biodiversity Rising * The Fundamental Unit * New Species * The Forces of Evolution * Adaptive Radiation * The Unexplored Biosphere * The Creation of Ecosystems * Biodiversity Reaches the Peak * The Human Impact * The Life and Death of Species * Biodiversity Threatened * Unmined Riches * Resolution * The Environmental Ethic * Notes * Glossary * Acknowledgments * Credits * Index
Edward O. Wilson was Pellegrino University Professor, Emeritus, at Harvard University. In addition to two Pulitzer Prizes (one of which he shares with Bert Hölldobler), Wilson has won many scientific awards, including the National Medal of Science and the Crafoord Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Wilson’s is still the best work we are ever likely to have on the
tangled, ever-changing relationships that all species on the planet
have with one another—and why the preservation of the same
biological diversity that sparks our curiosity and enriches our
spirit may also be the key to our survival.
*Washington Post*
The central message of Edward O. Wilson’s stirring new book…is that
Homo sapiens is in imminent danger of precipitating a biological
disaster to rival anything in evolutionary history. Mr. Wilson…is
the doyen of American biology. Two decades ago he popularized the
term ‘sociobiology,’ and generated a small industry of speculation
about the biological basis of human nature. In this book he stops
asking what biology does to humans, and asks instead what we humans
are doing to biology.
*New York Times Book Review*
We need prophets to shake the souls and grab the attention of those
who have eyes but see not. The Diversity of Life is a deft and
thoroughly successful mixture of information and prophecy.
*Nature*
Edward O. Wilson…has laid and elegant and ingratiating literary
style over a fundament of science to produce a book that will
enlighten the uninformed, correct the misinformed and serve as a
beacon of lucidity in the wilderness… Wilson takes us by the hand
and leads us through the wilderness of diversity—explaining along
the way how species evolve, adapt, specialize, colonize, hybridize,
recreate new versions of themselves, radiate out to new locations,
become new things in often symbiotic combination with other new
things, then transmogrify themselves into something else and move
on again to fill other niches, other combinations—a mad, wonderful
saraband of complexity and cohabitation that Wilson conducts with
eloquence, clarity, and wit.
*Washington Post Book World*
[Wilson’s] passion for the beauty and mystery of nature, coupled
with his adherence to scientific method and his unsurpassed
professional standing, give the work the possibility of being the
most important environmental book since Rachel Carson’s Silent
Spring.
*Boston Globe*
Edward Wilson reminds the jaded viewer that there really is a
crisis, and that—just as in 1917—it is already almost too late to
do anything about it. He gives a penetrating historical analysis of
what went wrong and even has a New Economic Plan which might, just,
pull us back from the brink… [This] book is a passionate defense of
life’s variety.
*London Review of Books*
One of the most engaging and interesting books that this reviewer
has seen recently. Wilson, internationally recognized as one of the
leading experts in this field, leads the reader through the often
difficult subject of biodiversity.
*Choice*
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