CONTENTS

Introduction: Are We All Going to Die?

PART I A HISTORY OF MASS EXTINCTIONS

1 The Apocalypse That Brought Us to Life

2 Two Ways to Go Extinct

3 The Great Dying

4 What Really Happened to the Dinosaurs

5 Is a Mass Extinction Going On Right Now?

PART II WE ALMOST DIDN’T MAKE IT

6 The African Bottleneck

7 Meeting the Neanderthals

8 Great Plagues

9 The Hungry Generations

PART III LESSONS FROM SURVIVORS

10 Scatter: Footprints of the Diaspora

11 Adapt: Meet the Toughest Microbes in the World

12 Remember: Swim South

13 Pragmatic Optimism, or Stories of Survival

PART IV HOW TO BUILD A DEATH-PROOF CITY

14 The Mutating Metropolis

15 Disaster Science

16 Using Math to Stop a Pandemic

17 Cities That Hide

18 Every Surface a Farm

PART V THE MILLION-YEAR VIEW

19 Terraforming Earth

20 Not in Our Planetary Backyard

21 Take a Ride on the Space Elevator

22 Your Body Is Optional

23 On Titan’s Beach

Acknowledgments

Illustration Credits

About the Author

Other Books by This Author

Large Map Images