Rivers in Time by Peter Ward, Columbia University Press, $29.95, ISBN
0231118627
IS THE Earth going through a mass-extinction event? Peter Ward from the
University of Washington thinks so, and sets out to make sense of the present by
unravelling the past. In Rivers in Time, Ward looks back at three mass
extinctions that have shaken the living world, before trying to make sense of a
possible modern extinction event. Catastrophism is in vogue again.
Although the blurb on the back cover carefully conceals the fact, Ward plays
a straight bat in the preface when he admits that the book…
