Endings: Encounters with Extinction

For readers of John Vaillant, Robert Macfarlane, and Helen Macdonald, a lyrical, panoramic exploration of extinction as it occurs and reoccurs in natural history, myth, and science. It’s no secret we live in an age of extinction: our daily newsfeeds and disappearing wildlife make that abundantly clear. But what does extinction really mean for humanity? Naturalist and poet Neil Griffin seeks to answer that question. The result is a globe-spanning, personal history of extinction: a grand tour of the dead, the nearly dead, and—against all odds—the still living. Griffin catches crocodiles in Belize, tracks bats on the Western plains, meets jaguars in Honduras, and, in Kenya, comes face to face with the northern white rhinoceros, the rarest mammal on Earth. Along the way, he connects our current moment to Earth’s deep history, exploring how mass extinctions occur and irreversibly shape life on our planet. Written with curiosity, compassion, and a surprising humour, Endings is an eye-opening journey through extinction—from the fossil record to the field biologist’s notebook, from myth to memory. In bearing witness to what we’ve lost, Griffin discovers something unexpected: that even in an age of endings, wonder and hope remain defiantly alive.