If you want to read a book about the ends of the world--five or six or seven times in a row depending on how you're counting--and ugly cry not about dead dinosaurs but about the possibilities for a beautiful future, THE ENDS OF THE WORLD is the book for you! I picked it up because it was on a library display and I love apocalypses, and then I justified reading it immediately because it seemed like a great research book for alien biology, the parameters of environments for carbon-based lifeforms, and ecosystems on the edge of collapse. And it is that! But it's also a great antidote to climate despair. Which you probably need, given… //waves hand at the world. I really did ugly cry--like, oh my god I need a handkerchief but I can't see where did I put the flannels, crying. Brannen manages a perfect mix of incredulous overwhelm at the scale of the dying in our past, and delighted wonder at the crazy beauty and potential of this planet.
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