The Ends of the World

Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth's Past Mass Extinctions

By: Peter Brannen

Narrated by: Adam Verner

As new groundbreaking research suggests that climate change played a major role in the most extreme catastrophes in the planet's history, award-winning science journalist Peter Brannen takes us on a wild ride through the planet's five mass extinctions and, in the process, offers us a glimpse of our increasingly dangerous future.

Our world has ended five times: It has been broiled, frozen, poison gassed, smothered, and pelted by asteroids. In The Ends of the World, Peter Brannen dives into deep time, exploring Earth's past dead ends, and in the process offers us a glimpse of our possible future.

Many scientists now believe that the climate shifts of the 21st century have analogs in these five extinctions. Using the visible clues these devastations have left behind in the fossil record, The Ends of the World takes us inside "scenes of the crime", from South Africa to the New York Palisades, to tell the story of each extinction. Brannen examines the fossil record - which is rife with creatures like dragonflies the size of sea gulls and guillotine-mouthed fish - and introduces us to the researchers on the front lines who, using the forensic tools of modern science, are piecing together what really happened at the crime scenes of the Earth's biggest whodunits.

Part road trip, part history, and part cautionary tale, The Ends of the World takes us on a tour of the ways that our planet has clawed itself back from the grave and casts our future in a completely new light.

©2017 Peter Brannen (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers

Amazing book, puts you in a profound perspective

The narration is just not good. This guy is 1 step above Fred Sanders, but still just has such an overt voice-over cadence, emphasis, I just really don't like the voice it was read in. Sounds like a movie preview, not a friend reading you a story.

great book. Awesome narrator

Just finished listening. definitely gonna give it another listen. very enjoyable book and narration. well done

Very interesting book

I enjoyed the scientific nature of this book and although it deals with a depressing end of world, it does it with humor along with some optimism and hope.

Easy to follow

A very good and enlightening look at our planet and the 5 historical mass extinctions that have taken place.

very approachable

I loved it. Good narration and fascinating subjects, maybe a little dark but such is life.

Doomsday book

There is no acknowledgment of God’s role in our being on earth. By not referring to God’s love, the author creates the reason we need a savior.

Highly recommend

Full of interesting information. There’s even a bit of the authors story in compiling the book.

Incredible

Made the alien worlds of past spring to life and the dusty, incremental work of paleontologists and geologists seems as epic and exciting as superheroes. But most impressively, it explained concepts like deep time and geological kill mechanisms in lush prose filled with insight and humor.

The reading was fantastic: I could listen at 1.25x and easily catch the full nuance of tone. I could tell when breaks in the text were occurring but never thought “hurry up!”

Well-written, fascinating science

This is my absolute favorite audiobook and it's gotten me obsessed with geology. I listened to it for the first time years ago, but have listened to it every night for almost a year to have something comforting on when I am trying to sleep. Does that mean this book is boring? 100% the opposite. This book is a gripping, fascinating tale of the Earth before humans and helps to put the human species and our activities on the planet into perspective.

The narrator also reads with a nice voice and inflects appropriate emotion and amusement into his performance without ever going over the top or becoming grating. It's clear that he understands what he is saying and isn't just reading out words. There's also a book about the Everglades that he narrates and I was very happy when I turned it on and heard his voice. I knew I was in for a good listen because I enjoy his performance of this book so much.

I find both the book itself and this performance of it to be quite soothing and honestly it helps calm me down when my mind is racing or when I'm having a panic attack. I truly, deeply love this book and recommend it to everyone. This book is the reason I go fossil hunting in every city I visit and why I've started reading academic geology texts. I gotta keep up to date on that end-Cretaceous drama.

Lost from time to time — but that's a good thing

There is a lot of doom and gloom floating around today, but this book will actually help you feel better by helping you understand just what our planet has gone through to get us here.

This is a layperson’s science book, but specific and complex enough for anyone with even a passing familiarity with the science discussed in these pages. From time to time, I would rewind, convinced I had missed something. And rewind again. And again. This is important stuff, and I wanted to understand as best I could. The narration was magnificent and gentle but strong, so rewinding was a pleasure.

I learned a lot from this book, which I couldn’t speak about with any authority after I read it — and that is fine with me. It makes sense, I got it — and if you want to get it, too, get this book.

True story: I nearly picked up the print book after the first extinction described, but held off. I am glad I did. If you are on unfamiliar ground, you won’t be for long. Peter Brannen has got your back, and Adam Verner’s got your ear. You’re in good hands.