The eminent Harvard naturalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Edward Wilson marshals all the prodigious powers of his intellect and imagination in this impassioned call to ensure the future of life. Opening with an imagined conversation with Henry David Thoreau at Walden Pond, he writes that he has come "to explain to you, and in reality to others and not least to myself, what has happened to the world we both have loved." Based on a love affair with the natural world that spans 70 years, Wilson combines lyrical descriptions with dire warnings and remarkable stories of flora and fauna on the edge of extinction with hard economics. How many species are we really losing? Is environmentalism truly contrary to economic development? And how can we save the planet? Wilson has penned an eloquent plea for the need for a global land ethic and offers the strategies necessary to ensure life on earth based on foresight, moral courage, and the best tools that science and technology can provide.

One of the world's most important scientists, Edward O. Wilson is also an abundantly talented writer who has twice won the Pulitzer Prize. In this, his most personal and timely book to date, he assesses the precarious state of our environment, examining the mass extinctions occurring in our time and the natural treasures we are about to lose forever. Yet, rather than espousing doomsday prophesies, he spells out a specific plan to save our world while there is still time. His vision is a hopeful one, as economically sound as it is environmentally necessary. Eloquent, practical and wise, this book should be read and studied by anyone concerned with the fate of the natural world.

List of Endangered and Extinct Species and Races

Prologue: A Letter to Thoreau

CHAPTER 1 TO THE ENDS OF EARTH

CHAPTER 2 THE BOTTLENECK

CHAPTER 3 NATURE'S LAST STAND

CHAPTER 4 THE PLANETARY KILLER

CHAPTER 5 HOW MUCH IS THE BIOSPHERE WORTH?

CHAPTER 6 FOR THE LOVE OF LIFE

CHAPTER 7 THE SOLUTION

Notes

Glossary

Acknowledgments

Index