Extinction: How Life on Earth Nearly Ended 250 Million Years Ago - Douglas H. Erwin

disappointing

Not a complete waste of time, but close. SPOILER ALERT: by the end of Irwin's book, all we learn is that he has no idea what caused the end-Permian extinction. Moreover, since the truly remarkable work of his colleagues and him has not provided the answer, we will never know just how it happened.
Irwin likewise concludes that the greatest extinction of all time was quite irrelevant and had no effect on evolutionary patterns that followed. Worst of all, the writing style is quite dry, not easy to read or well-written for the layman. I cannot imagine who he was writing for.

Hand a copy of your book to an English major, Prof. Erwin.

I am loving this book but besides all my highlighting of truly interesting text, I am having to edit a lot of punctuation, style and grammar errors. Yes, I'm a bit obsessive but I'm wondering Prof. Erwin, why aren't you? This is the fourth printing. . . these errors should be gone by now. Are you as lackadaisical about your geology?

Good follow up

This book is a reappraisal of his previous book on the same subject "The Great Paleozoic crisis". That was a good book, scientifically rigorous, but also a hard slog to read. This one keeps the same careful approach, and improves on its ancestor in two ways. First there is a lot of updated information, partcularly Erwin now looks at the possibility of an asteroid impact having caused the extinction. Secondly he tries to make it more accessible with a few more personal anecdotes. It still isn't an easy read, but definitely a worthwhile account of a subject that is often lost amongst the attention given to dinosaurs and their spectacular extinction.

Very informative overview of the Permian Mass Extinction

I found this book very easy to read. Mr. Erwin has a sort of sense of humor he adds to the book to take away from any text book monotony you may be afraid of. He is also extremely in depth and explains with seemingly little bias the many proposed possible causes and evidence (or lack of) for this mass extinction. There are also many diagrams and graphs to illustrate much of the pertenant information. I won't get too in depth with the contents, I will just say if you have any interest in the Permian, or any other prehistoric event, I suggest you read it.

Interesting topic, expert writer, frustrating book

I wish I could give this book three or four stars. Erwin is an expert in the area of the Permian extinction, and when he tries, he can write well. Unfortunately, he does not seem to try often. There are just too many sentences here that need to be read two or three times before their meaning becomes clear. The meaning of many of the graphics never become clear! And at the end of each chapter, I was unclear about what I had learned, and what I could expect next.

I finally gave up half way through the book. At that point, I was as confused about the Permian extinction as I was at the beginning, and I cannot even say I was confused at a higher level.