Elizabeth Kolbert

Elizabeth Kolbert
Born	(1961-07-06) July 6, 1961 (age 63)
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Yale University
Occupation(s)	Journalist and author
Awards	National Magazine Award (2006) National Magazine Award (2010) Heinz Award (2010) Pulitzer Prize (2015)

Elizabeth Kolbert (born July 6, 1961) is an American journalist, author, and visiting fellow at Williams College.

She is best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History,^[1] and as an observer and commentator on the environment for The New Yorker magazine.^[2]

The Sixth Extinction was a New York Times bestseller and won the Los Angeles Times' book prize for science and technology. Her book Under a White Sky was one of The Washington Post's ten best books of 2021. Kolbert is a two-time National Magazine Award winner, and in 2022 was awarded the BBVA Biophilia Award for Environmental Communication.

Her work has appeared in The Best American Science and Nature Writing and The Best American Essays.

Kolbert served as a member of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' Science and Security Board from 2017 to 2020.^[3]

Early life

Kolbert spent her early childhood in the Bronx; her family then relocated to Larchmont, where she remained until 1979.

After graduating from Mamaroneck High School, Kolbert spent four years studying literature at Yale University. In 1983, she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study at Universität Hamburg, in Germany. Her brother, Dan Kolbert of Portland, Maine, is a well-known builder and author.

Career

Elizabeth Kolbert started working for The New York Times as a stringer in Germany in 1983. In 1985, she went to work for the Metro desk. Kolbert served as the Times' Albany bureau chief from 1988 to 1991 and wrote the Metro Matters column from 1997 to 1998.

Since 1999, she has been a staff writer for The New Yorker.^[2]

She was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for The Sixth Extinction in 2015.^[4]

Personal life

Kolbert resides in Williamstown, Massachusetts, with her husband, John Kleiner, and three sons (Ned, Matthew, and Aaron).^[5]

Recognition

• 2005 American Association for the Advancement of Science Journalism Award^[6]
• 2006 National Magazine Award for Public Interest^[7]
• 2006 Lannan Literary Fellowship^[8]
• 2006 National Academies Communication Award^[9]
• 16th Annual Heinz Award with special focus on global change, 2010^[10]
• 2010 National Magazine Award for Commentary^[11]
• 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship in Science Writing^[12]
• 2015 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction^[13]
• 2016 Sam Rose '58 and Julie Walters Prize at Dickinson College for Environmental Activism^[14]
• 2017 SEAL Environmental Journalism Award^[15]
• Blake-Dodd Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2017.^[16]

Bibliography

Books

• Kolbert, Elizabeth (2004). The prophet of love : and other tales of power and deceit. New York: Bloomsbury.
• — (2006). Field notes from a catastrophe : man, nature, and climate change. New York: Bloomsbury.
• Kolbert, Elizabeth & Francis Spufford, eds. (2007). The ends of the Earth : an anthology of the finest writing on the Arctic and the Antarctic. 1st U.S. ed. New York: Bloomsbury.
• Kolbert, Elizabeth, ed. (2009). The best American science and nature writing 2009. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
• — (2014). The sixth extinction : an unnatural history.
• — (2021). Under a white sky. Penguin Random House.

Essays and reporting

• Kolbert, Elizabeth (October 14–21, 2002). "The lost mariner". The Critics. Books. The New Yorker. 78: 206–211.
• — (November 20, 2006). "The darkening sea". Annals of Science. The New Yorker.
• — (March 29, 2010). "Batless". Postcard from Vermont. The New Yorker. 86 (6): 42–43.^[a]
• — (March 11, 2013). "Up all night : the science of sleeplessness". Modern Life. The New Yorker. 89 (4): 24–27.
• — (October 21, 2013). "Head count : fertilizer, fertility, and the clashes over population growth". The Critics. Books. The New Yorker. 89 (33): 96–99.
• — (December 16, 2013). "The lost world : the mastodon's molars". Annals of Extinction. Part One. The New Yorker. 89 (41): 28–38.
• — (December 23–30, 2013). "the lost world: fossils of the future". Annals of Extinction. Part Two. The New Yorker. 89 (42): 48–56.
• — (March 3, 2014). "Big score : when Mom takes the SAT's". American Chronicles. The New Yorker. 90 (2): 38–41.
• — (April 14, 2014). "Rough forecasts". The Talk of the Town. Comment. The New Yorker. 90 (8): 21–22.
• — (July 28, 2014). "Stone soup". Annals of Alimentation. The New Yorker. 90 (21): 26–29.^[b]
• — (August 25, 2014). "Bug bed". The Talk of the Town. Field Studies. The New Yorker. 90 (24): 20.^[c]
• — (December 22–29, 2014). "The big kill : New Zealand's crusade to rid itself of mammals". Annals of Extermination. The New Yorker. 90 (41): 120–126, 128–129.
• — (January 12, 2015). "Civic duty". The Talk of the Town. Postcard from Rome. The New Yorker. 90 (43): 20, 22.^[d]
• — (February 2, 2015). "Such a Stoic : how Seneca became Ancient Rome's philosopher-fixer". The Critics. Books. The New Yorker. 90 (46): 66–69.
• — (February 16, 2015). "The last trial : a great-grandmother, Auschwitz, and the arc of justice". Letter from Berlin. The New Yorker. 91 (1): 24–30.
• — (December 7, 2015). "Unsafe climates". The Talk of the Town. Comment. The New Yorker. 91 (39): 23–24.^[e]
• — (August 8–15, 2016). "Swords, sandals". The Talk of the Town. The Pictures. The New Yorker. 92 (24): 21–22.^[f]
• — (October 24, 2016). "Greenland Is Melting". Letter from Greenland. The New Yorker.
• — (December 19–26, 2016). "Rage against the machine : will robots take your job?". The Critics. Books. The New Yorker. 92 (42): 114–118.^[g]
• — (February 27, 2017). "That's what you think : why reason and evidence won't change our minds". The Critics. Books. The New Yorker. 93 (2): 66–71.^[h]
• — (June 19, 2017). "Incident". The Talk of the Town. Art's Sake Dept. The New Yorker. 93 (17): 23.^[i]
• — (May 20, 2019). "Last chances". The Talk of the Town. Comment. The New Yorker. 95 (13): 23–24.^[j]
• — (May 20, 2019). "The ice stupas : artificial glaciers at the edge of the Himalayas". Portfolio. The New Yorker. 95 (13). Photographs by Vasantha Yogananthan: 54–67.^[k]
• — (January 13, 2020). "Don't wait". The Talk of the Town. Comment. The New Yorker. 95 (44): 13–14.^[l]
• — (July 27, 2020). "The catastrophist : NASA's climate expert delivers the news no wants to know". Profiles. June 29, 2009. The New Yorker. 96 (21): 24–29.^[m]
• — (October 12, 2020). "This close : the day the Cuban missile crisis almost went nuclear". The New Yorker: 70–73.^[n]
• — (January 25, 2021). "Swinging on a star : have signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life been found already?". The Critics. Books. The New Yorker. 96 (45): 60–64.^[o]
• — (June 21, 2021). "The deep : when we mine rare metals from the ocean floor, what other riches will be lost?". The Critics. Books. The New Yorker. 97 (17): 58–62.^[p]
• Elizabeth Kolbert, "The Waste Land" (review of Lina Zeldovich, The Other Dark Matter: The Science and Business of Turning Waste into Wealth and Health, University of Chicago Press, 259 pp.; and Jo Handelsman, A World Without Soil: The Past, Present, and Precarious Future of the Earth Beneath Our Feet, Yale University Press, 262 pp.), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXIX, no. 3 (24 February 2022), pp. 4, 6.
• — (August 22, 2022). "The political climate". The Talk of the Town. Comment. The New Yorker. 98 (25): 11–12.^[q]
• — (March 20, 2023). "A Little-Known Planet: An entomologist races to find caterpillars before they disappear". Annals of Science. The New Yorker. 99 (5): 40–47.^[r]
• Elizabeth Kolbert, "A Trillion Little Pieces: How plastics are poisoning us", The New Yorker, 3 July 2023, pp. 24–27. "If much of contemporary life is wrapped up in plastic, and the result of this is that we are poisoning our kids, ourselves, and our ecosystems, then contemporary life may need to be rethought." (p. 27.)
• Elizabeth Kolbert, "Spored to Death" (review of Emily Monosson, Blight: Fungi and the Coming Pandemic, Norton, 253 pp.; and Alison Pouliot, Meetings with Remarkable Mushrooms: Forays with Fungi Across Hemispheres, University of Chicago Press, 278 pp.), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXX, no.14 (21 September 2023), pp. 41–42. "Fungi sicken us and fungi sustain us. In either case, we ignore them at our peril." (p. 42.)
• Elizabeth Kolbert, "Needful Things: The raw materials for the world we've built come at a cost" (largely based on Ed Conway, Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization, Knopf, 2023; Vince Beiser, The World in a Grain; and Chip Colwell, So Much Stuff: How Humans Discovered Tools, Invented Meaning, and Made More of Everything, Chicago), The New Yorker, 30 October 2023, pp. 20–23. Kolbert mainly discusses the importance to modern civilization, and the finite sources of, six raw materials: high-purity quartz (needed to produce silicon chips), sand, iron, copper, petroleum (which Conway lumps together with another fossil fuel, natural gas), and lithium. Kolbert summarizes archeologist Colwell's review of the evolution of technology, which has ended up giving the Global North a superabundance of "stuff," at an unsustainable cost to the world's environment and reserves of raw materials.
• Elizabeth Kolbert, "Rat Pack: The classic rodent studies that foretold a nightmarish human future", The New Yorker, 7 October 2024, pp. 60–63.

Introductions, forewords and other contributions

• Van Gelder, Gordon, ed. (2011). Welcome to the greenhouse : new science fiction on climate change. Preface by Elizabeth Kolbert. New York: OR Books.

Critical studies and reviews of Kolbert's work

Field notes from a catastrophe

• Gosnell, Mariana (March 16, 2006). "In epoch of man, Earth takes a beating". The New York Times.

The sixth extinction

• Gore, Al (February 10, 2014). "Without a trace". Book Review. The New York Times.

Under a white sky

• Ehrenreich, Ben (March 26, 2021). "Under a White Sky by Elizabeth Kolbert review – the path to catastrophe". The Guardian.

———————

Notes

1. On White nose syndrome.
2. The Paleolithic diet.
3. Beecher's Trilobite Bed.
4. Renzo Piano.
5. Title in the online table of contents is "Paris, Syria, and climate change".
6. Online version is titled "Morgan Freeman's 'Ben-Hur'".
7. Online version is titled "Our automated future".
8. Online version is titled "Why facts don't change our minds".
9. Online version is titled "James Turrell makes light physical".
10. Online version is titled "Climate change and the new age of extinction".
11. Online version is titled "The art of building artificial glaciers".
12. Online version is titled "What will another decade of climate crisis bring?".
13. Title in the online table of contents is "The climate expert who delivered news no one wanted to hear". Originally published in the June 29, 2009 issue.
14. A review of Martin J. Sherwin's Gambling with armageddon : nuclear roulette from Hiroshima to the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York : Knopf, 2020). Includes information from recently declassified sources.
15. Online version is titled "Have we already been visited by aliens?".
16. Online version is titled "The deep sea is filled with treasure, but it comes at a price".
17. Online version is titled "How did fighting climate change become a partisan issue?".
18. Online version is titled "The Little-Known World of Caterpillars".

References

1. "2015 Pulitzer Prizes". The Pulitzer Prizes.
2. "Contributors: Elizabeth Kolbert". The New Yorker. Retrieved March 27, 2009.
3. "Science and Security Board". Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. March 30, 2017.
4. "The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, by Elizabeth Kolbert (Henry Holt)". The Pulitzer Prizes. 2015. Retrieved July 24, 2021.
5. "Elizabeth Kolbert". Simon & Schuster. November 14, 2012. Archived from the original on November 14, 2012. Retrieved July 25, 2021.
6. "AAAS Science Journalism Award Recipients". American Association for the Advancement of Science. Archived from the original on October 21, 2013. Retrieved November 20, 2013.
7. "National Magazine Awards 2006 Winners Announced at 40th Anniversary Celebration". magazine.org. Archived from the original on November 22, 2018. Retrieved November 20, 2013.
8. "Elizabeth Kolbert". lannan.org.
9. "National Academies Keck Futures Initiative – -". keckfutures.org. Archived from the original on November 22, 2018. Retrieved November 20, 2013.
10. "The Heinz Awards: Elizabeth Kolbert". The Heinz Awards. Retrieved August 26, 2016.
11. "ASME Announces the Winners of the 2010 National Magazine Awards". magazine.org. Archived from the original on November 22, 2018. Retrieved November 20, 2013.
12. "Elizabeth Kolbert – John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation". Archived from the original on December 3, 2013. Retrieved November 25, 2013.
13. "The Pulitzer Prizes – Citation". The Pulitzer Prizes.
14. Getty, Matt. "The Sam Rose '58 and Julie Walters Prize at Dickinson College for Global Environmental Activism". Dickinson College.
15. "2017 SEAL Environmental Journalism Award Winners – SEAL Awards". SEAL Awards. September 26, 2017. Retrieved October 12, 2017.
16. "Search Results for "kolbert" – American Academy of Arts and Letters". American Academy of Arts and Letters. n.d. Retrieved July 24, 2021.

External links

Media related to Elizabeth Kolbert at Wikimedia Commons

• Official website
• "An Interview with Elizabeth Kolbert", Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) 2006
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Twitter page
• New Yorker articles
• "Focus 580; The Climate of Man," 2005-05-27, WILL Illinois Public Media, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed June 7, 2021.