Jones Library Announces Book Selection for On the Same Page – Amherst 2017

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.