The Jones Library is holding
its fifth On the Same Page community reading program, this year featuring the
book The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, a Pulitzer Prize-winning book
by Elizabeth Kolbert. A series of
programs will be held in February 2017, based on topics and themes from the
book. On the Same Page – Amherst
will culminate in an author appearance to be held on Tuesday, February 28, 2017
at the Amherst Regional Middle School Auditorium.
The Sixth Extinction was the winner of the 2015 Pulitzer
Prize for general nonfiction, a finalist for the PEN Literary Award and the
L.A. Times Book Prize, and a New York Times bestseller that was included on
many “Best Books” lists in 2014 and 2015.
This book explores five mass extinctions that have occurred over the
past half-billion years, when the diversity of life on earth has been severely
reduced. Scientists are now
tracking the next mass extinction, of which human beings and their actions may
be the direct cause. Kolbert
explains how humans have altered life on the planet and how these actions may
become our legacy.
Elizabeth Kolbert has been a staff writer at The New Yorker
since 1999. Previously, she worked at the New York Times, and was also a
contributor to the Times Magazine.
She received a Lannan Literary Fellowship in 2006 and a Heinz Award in
2010, and won the 2010 National Magazine Award for Reviews and Criticism. She
is the editor of “The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2009” and the
author of The Prophet of Love: And Other Tales of Power and Deceit; Field Notes
from a Catastrophe, and The Sixth Extinction.
On The Same Page – Amherst is designed to bring the local
community together by encouraging residents to read the same book and by
offering programming and opportunities for discussion about the book and the
themes it contains. Now an
annual event, On the Same Page – Amherst explores a different book each year to
include a variety of themes, topics, genres, and writing styles.
For further information about the On the Same Page –
Amherst, please contact Janet Ryan at 413/259-3223.
