Williamstown resident Elizabeth Kolbert won a Pulitzer Prize Monday for her latest book. Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History won the Pulitzer for general nonfiction.Judges called the work "an exploration of nature that forces readers to consider the threat posed by human behavior to a world of astonishing diversity." Kolbert, a staff writer at the New Yorker and former New York Times Albany bureau chief, spoke with WAMC’s Joe Donahue about previous extinctions and what she sees as a developing one.
“They were not caused by a single species,” Kolbert said. “Now we, one species out of many, many million on the face of the earth is the agent for this extinction. So it’s a very, very unusual event.”
Kolbert was reporting in Bavaria when she found out about the Pulitzer.
