A Conversation with Pulitzer Prize-Winner Elizabeth Kolbert
Document Type
Article
Date of Original Version
4-13-2023
Abstract
Elizabeth Kolbert has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1999 and written dozens of pieces for the magazine. Her series on global warming, “The Climate of Man,” appeared in The New Yorker in the spring of 2005 and won the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s magazine award.
Her second book, Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change grew out of a groundbreaking three-part series on global warming for The New Yorker. The book brings the environment into the consciousness of the American people and asks what, if anything, can be done, and how we can save our planet. She explains the science and the studies, draws frightening parallels to lost ancient civilizations, unpacks the politics, and presents the personal tales of those who are being affected most—the people who make their homes near the poles and, in an eerie foreshadowing, are watching their worlds disappear.
Kolbert’s 2014 book, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, won the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction. This work, which began as an article for The New Yorker, is a study about mass extinctions that weaves intellectual and natural history with reporting in the field. Kolbert’s latest book, Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future, was a national bestseller and was named one of the best books of the year by the Washington Post, Time, Esquire, Smithsonian Magazine, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, and Library Journal. This latest text follows many of the same themes Kolbert explored in The Sixth Extinction.
Kolbert has won numerous accolades, most recently being voted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Prior to joining the staff at The New Yorker, Kolbert was a political journalist at The New York Times.