Science

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History Elizabeth Kolbert, 2014 Executive Summary There have been five mass extinction events in the history of life on Earth, moments when a significant fraction of all species were wiped out in a geologically brief period. Elizabeth Kolbert’s argument, built from years of reporting alongside scientists in the field, is that we are living through the sixth. Unlike the previous five, this one has a cause that can be identified: us. The Sixth Extinction is not a polemic. It is journalism at its best: rigorous, specific, and quietly devastating. The thesis: the scale of human impact on the biosphere is now comparable to the asteroid that ended the Cretaceous, and we are the only extinction-causing force in Earth’s history that could, in principle, choose differently. ...

Thinking, Fast and Slow Daniel Kahneman, 2011 Executive Summary Daniel Kahneman spent his career, much of it alongside his late collaborator Amos Tversky, mapping the systematic ways human beings make decisions. Thinking, Fast and Slow is the culmination of that work: a comprehensive account of the two cognitive systems that govern thought, the biases they generate, and the conditions under which each system fails. The thesis is both humbling and useful: we are not the rational actors we believe ourselves to be, and knowing the specific ways we are irrational is the beginning of thinking more clearly. This is Sagan’s baloney detection kit applied to the interior. ...