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In a cloud forest in central Panama, the golden frogs that once crowded the streams around El Valle de Antón had all but vanished by the time Elizabeth Kolbert arrived, killed by a fungus that people had carried there. She opens The Sixth Extinction with them. Kolbert spent fifteen years at The New York Times, much of it covering New York politics, before joining The New Yorker in 1999. In 2005 her three-part series on global warming, “The Climate of Man”, won a National Magazine Award, and since then her books have followed climate change and extinction to the places where they can be seen: Alaska, Greenland, coral reefs, a Chicago canal. This guide covers her 6 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 6 key books · 2004–2025 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Elizabeth Kolbert has written six books, among them Field Notes from a Catastrophe (2006), The Sixth Extinction (2014), which won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, and Under a White Sky (2021). Start with The Sixth Extinction; the books stand alone, so you can go on to whichever subject pulls you next.
Where to Start with Elizabeth Kolbert
If you want her defining book
→ The Sixth Extinction (2014) — the Pulitzer-winning account of a mass extinction in progress.
If you want the climate book that started it
→ Field Notes from a Catastrophe (2006) — Alaska, Greenland and the Netherlands in 2005.
If you want what people are doing about it
→ Under a White Sky (2021) — the fixes, from electrified rivers to geoengineering.
If you want something short
→ H Is for Hope (2024) — 26 illustrated essays, one for each letter.
6 Elizabeth Kolbert Books, in Order
The Prophet of Love
Her first book collects her New Yorker pieces on New York political life, written before she turned to science. The subjects run from Boss Tweed to Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, Al Sharpton, George Pataki and Michael Bloomberg, with pieces on Albany, where she had been the Times’ bureau chief. Kirkus Reviews called it a set of “shrewd, meaty, colorful portraits”.
Field Notes from a Catastrophe
Grown out of “The Climate of Man”, her three-part New Yorker series of 2005, the book follows climate scientists in Alaska, Greenland, Iceland and the Netherlands and sets their findings against the politics of doing nothing. The last part turns to Hurricane Katrina and to governments that know how to prepare for disaster but wait too long. Reviewers compared it to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.
The Sixth Extinction
Earth has been through five mass extinctions; Kolbert argues that humans are causing a sixth. Each chapter follows one species or group, from Panama’s golden frogs, killed by a fungus people spread, to the great auk, hunted out by 1844, bats dying of white-nose syndrome, acidifying coral reefs and the Sumatran rhino. Published by Henry Holt, it won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Under a White Sky
A book about people trying to solve problems that earlier interventions created. Kolbert visits the electric barriers meant to keep Asian carp out of Lake Michigan, a 4.5-million-dollar replica of the Nevada pool that holds the Devils Hole pupfish, scientists engineering corals and cane toads, a plant in Iceland turning carbon dioxide into stone, and researchers studying ways to dim the sun. The Washington Post named it one of the ten best books of 2021.
H Is for Hope
Twenty-six short essays, one for each letter of the alphabet, illustrated in ink by Wesley Allsbrook and published by Ten Speed Press. They cover the grid, extreme heat, climate migration and the people working on solutions; the title essay first appeared in The New Yorker in 2022, and under “O” she takes on critics such as Vaclav Smil.
Life on a Little-Known Planet
A collection of her reporting on climate and the natural world, published by Crown and including pieces from “The Climate of Man”. Subjects include a carbon-neutral Danish island, a Florida community that voted to give its waterways legal rights, the melting Greenland ice sheet, a biologist who hopes to talk to whales and an entomologist searching for rare caterpillars before they disappear.
In What Order to Read Elizabeth Kolbert
None of her books depends on another, so you can read by subject. In publication order you can see her move from New York politics in The Prophet of Love to climate science in Field Notes from a Catastrophe, then outward to the whole history of life in The Sixth Extinction, and finally to what people are trying to do about it.
Under a White Sky reads best after The Sixth Extinction, since it picks up where that book stops. H Is for Hope and Life on a Little-Known Planet are shorter pieces and work as a way in or a way to go on.
A reading path
1. The Sixth Extinction (2014)
2. Field Notes from a Catastrophe (2006)
3. Under a White Sky (2021)
4. H Is for Hope (2024)
5. Life on a Little-Known Planet (2025)
Everything Else Elizabeth Kolbert Published
Beyond the 6 key books: 3 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Edited anthologies
3
3 books · 2007–2011
- 2007The Ends of the Earthan anthology of polar writing, edited with Francis Spufford
- 2009The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2009guest editor of the annual series
- 2011Welcome to the Greenhousenew climate fiction, edited with a preface
The years · 1961–2025
Quick facts about Elizabeth Kolbert
- Known for
- Reporting on climate change and extinction that takes readers to the places and scientists where the damage can be measured.
- 1961
- Born; grows up in the Bronx and Larchmont, New York
- 1999
- Joins The New Yorker as a staff writer
- Born
- 1961; grew up in the Bronx and Larchmont, New York
- Education
- Yale University (literature); Fulbright scholar at the University of Hamburg, 1983
- The New York Times
- 1983–1999, including Albany bureau chief (1988–1991)
- The New Yorker
- Staff writer since 1999
- Honours
- Pulitzer Prize (2015), Heinz Award (2010), Guggenheim Fellowship (2010), two National Magazine Awards
- Lives
- Williamstown, Massachusetts, with her husband John Kleiner
The red mark is 2014: The Sixth Extinction, which won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.
How Elizabeth Kolbert Writes: Going Where the Change Is
Kolbert builds each chapter around a trip. Rather than summarising the literature, she goes to the place where a change can be seen and to the scientist measuring it: a frog lab in Panama, a cave of dying bats, an ice camp in Greenland, the electric barrier in a Chicago canal. The science arrives through what she sees and through the people she spends time with.
Her years as a political reporter show in the second half of the argument. Field Notes from a Catastrophe and Under a White Sky are as much about the decisions people make, or avoid, as about the physics and biology. She keeps herself mostly out of the story, writes in short declarative sentences, and lets numbers and specific species carry the weight.
Her later books move from diagnosis to response: what engineering, policy and small communities are trying to do, and where those efforts fall short. For writers who work the same ground, from Rachel Carson to Ed Yong, see Authors like Elizabeth Kolbert.
Watch
Elizabeth Kolbert at UC Berkeley
Kolbert gives the Horace Albright Lecture in Conservation at UC Berkeley’s Rausser College of Natural Resources on 17 November 2021, the year Under a White Sky was published.
Frequently asked questions about Elizabeth Kolbert’s books
How many books has Elizabeth Kolbert written?
Six: The Prophet of Love (2004), Field Notes from a Catastrophe (2006), The Sixth Extinction (2014), Under a White Sky (2021), H Is for Hope (2024) and Life on a Little-Known Planet (2025). She has also edited three anthologies.
What are Elizabeth Kolbert’s books in order?
The Prophet of Love: And Other Tales of Power and Deceit (2004), Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change (2006), The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (2014), Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future (2021), H Is for Hope: Climate Change from A to Z (2024) and Life on a Little-Known Planet: Dispatches from a Changing World (2025).
Where should I start with Elizabeth Kolbert?
The Sixth Extinction, her best-known book, in which each chapter follows one species to explain how humans are driving a mass extinction. For climate change specifically, start with Field Notes from a Catastrophe.
What is Elizabeth Kolbert’s most famous book?
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (2014). It won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and became a New York Times bestseller.
What is Elizabeth Kolbert known for?
Her reporting on climate change and extinction for The New Yorker, where she has been a staff writer since 1999, and above all The Sixth Extinction. Before that she spent fifteen years at The New York Times, much of it covering New York politics.
Is The Sixth Extinction worth reading?
It is the book that won her the 2015 Pulitzer Prize, and it does not require any science background: each chapter is built around a visit to a place and a species, from Panama’s golden frogs to the Sumatran rhino, with the scientists who study them.
What should I read after The Sixth Extinction?
Under a White Sky (2021), which asks whether people can fix the damage with more intervention. For other writers on the same subjects, see Authors like Elizabeth Kolbert and my best science books list.
What is Under a White Sky about?
People trying to solve environmental problems that earlier human interventions caused: electric barriers against Asian carp in Chicago, a replica desert pool for the Devils Hole pupfish, engineered corals, turning carbon dioxide into stone in Iceland and proposals to dim the sun with particles in the stratosphere.
Is Field Notes from a Catastrophe out of date?
Its data date from 2005, when the New Yorker series it is based on appeared, so the numbers have moved on. The trips to Alaska, Greenland, Iceland and the Netherlands and its account of political delay still hold; Life on a Little-Known Planet (2025) reprints pieces from that series alongside newer reporting.
What prizes has Elizabeth Kolbert won?
The 2015 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for The Sixth Extinction, two National Magazine Awards (2006 and 2010), the Heinz Award (2010), a Guggenheim Fellowship (2010) and the Blake-Dodd Prize of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2017), of which she is a member.
Footnotes
- Elizabeth Kolbert — Wikipedia
- The Sixth Extinction — Wikipedia
- Field Notes from a Catastrophe — Wikipedia
- Under a White Sky review — Science News, 2021
- Review: H Is for Hope — National Center for Science Education
- Elizabeth Kolbert — New York State Writers Institute
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing.”
— Elizabeth Kolbert, Field Notes from a Catastrophe (2006)
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