Publishers Weekly
★ 04/28/2025
Journalist Lathan debuts with a devastating survey of how human negligence pushed species to extinction over the past 25 years. Several stories highlight how invasive species introduced by humans exterminated native inhabitants, as when Lathan recounts how in 1967, a French border guard homesick for snail soup while posted in Polynesia imported a batch of voracious giant African land snails that devoured the islands’ last indigenous Partula faba tree snail by 2016. Describing conservationists’ anguished attempts to save each species, Lathan notes how ecologist Rich Switzer barely slept as he monitored the last living po‘ouli bird, which spent its final days with an IV drip attached to its leg before succumbing to malaria that first arrived in Maui with mosquito stowaways on a 19th-century ship. There’s no shortage of tear-jerking moments, as when Lathan notes the eerie scene as researchers attempting to catch the last known pipistrelle (a moth-size bat that fell prey to habitat destruction) listened as it fell silent for the last time. Tales of how the Catarina pupfish, Pinta Island tortoise, and Christmas Island forest skink went extinct decry human callousness while demanding better protection for extant endangered species. This moving elegy will stick with readers long after the final page. Illus. Agent: Jessica Woollard, David Higham Assoc. (June)
From the Publisher
Timely, elegiac” —Daily Mail
“Lathan's superb storytelling makes ecological crisis personal, local and often scarily visible. He doesn't let the tragedy hide, as it usually does, behind graphs and abstractions. Yet there's hope here too, in spades. This is an exhilarating and vital book.” —Charles Foster, author of Cry of the Wild
“Not just a timely epitaph . . . but a celebration of their existence, reminding us of their wonder.” —Stephen Moss, author of Ten Birds That Changed the World
“A beautifully crafted elegy for the lost species of our age. In repopulating the world with extinct snails, lizards, bats and rats, Tom Lathan makes us marvel and care almost as much as the conservationists who tried and failed to save them.” —Kate Teltscher, author of Palace of Palms
“These are important stories and Lathan tells them with pathos and sensitivity.” —Ross Barnett, author of The Missing Lynx
Kirkus Reviews
2025-03-22
Ancient species, forever gone.
The unfortunate distinction of the probable first extinction of the 21st century goes to a species of microscopic snail that, for millions of years, lived on a single limestone hill in a Malaysian forest. An eminent Dutch biologist first described them in 1952, naming this member of the genusPlectostoma sciaphilum, the second word meaning “lover of shadows.” It was last seen alive in 2001 and declared extinct in 2014, a victim of human demand for concrete, which also claimed Bukit Panching, the hill where the species once thrived and which is now a lake filling the hole that cement companies left in their wake. This is just one of 10 “tales” recounting the loss of species from all over the world, including Hawaiian and Brazilian birds, reptiles in Mexico and the Galapagos Islands, a plant from St. Helena in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and even the first known mammal claimed by anthropogenic climate change, an Australian species of rat called the Bramble Cay melomys. Lathan is a superb writer, in a class with Merlyn Sheldrake, Robert McFarlane, and Bruce Chatwin. “Translucent and cast in deep yellow and red hues, from mustard to plum to maroon, they formed striking shapes,” he writes ofsciaphilum. “There was something about these shells, in their colours and their lines, that gave them the appearance of being variations on a single idea—as though they were tiny glass sculptures blown by the same artist.” Latham is also an intrepid reporter and meticulous researcher. Each chapter provides a wealth of knowledge about these species’ natural history, human discovery, and probable causes of disappearance. We may be able to learn how to protect at least some heading toward the same fate.
A haunting elegy for the sixth extinction, with a note of hope.
