Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2018 -

Philosophers have long stressed the importance of thinking through the implications of one's own death. Indeed, the existentialists are not alone in appreciating the transformative realizations that emerge when the appreciation of mortality and finitude become hallmarks of human thinking. Accordingly, scholars are beginning to appreciate the importance of thinking about the human condition as framed by the pressing realities of extinction. In this impressive volume, Grusin (English, Univ. of Wisconsin, Milwaukee) brings together a host of voices, from a variety of disciplines, to think through the challenges and opportunities that extinction might present. Rather than simply seeing extinction as an end, the contributors variously consider the forms of life that might emerge, forms of culture that might develop, and possibilities that might present themselves once one begins to understand the essential limitations of current human modes of social and economic existence. Far from being nihilistic, this book is a valiant attempt to explore how one ought to live in the face of the impossibility of continuing to live in the way to which one has grown accustomed. As such, this volume is a call to innovation as much as a call to remembrance.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals.