Sadiah Qureshi

Highly readable and academically rigorous... traces the entanglements of race, empire and colonialism to better understand extinction

Dark, persuasive, detailed, poetic… exquisitely attuned to the (often overlooked) historical and political contexts in which scientific ideas thrive

Both authoritative and readable, panoramic in its scope and incisive in its argument... a truly original, challenging and consequential book

Illuminating and disturbing in equal measure. A poignant and powerfully written account of the intellectual revolution that birthed the concept of extinction; a concept deployed to both justify and animate colonialism and even extermination. A vital and important book

A marvellous, troubling, moving and important book lit with hope, Vanished is an intellectually acute history of both the idea and the reality of extinction. In a series of fascinating examples ranging from the fates of entire peoples to the remains of a single bird in a museum, Qureshi illumines how our ideas of extinction have been forged and shaped by myriad things, from the intellectual debates of eighteenth-century naturalists to the brutal history of colonialism and the political context of the Cold War. I learned so much from Vanished and am so grateful for it

Helen Macdonald, author of H is for Hawk

A compelling homage to living and extinct beings, Qureshi’s masterpiece is a superbly written, urgent and heart racing volume. Unweaving the threads of centuries of teleological explanations, imperial scientific approaches and offering a new path to understanding mass extinction is a stroke of genius. Vanished is enthralling, devastating and yet empowering

Olivette Otele, author of African Europeans

One of our most innovative historians guides us with grace, humility and conviction through the daunting, tangled thickets of species extinction and human extermination. Qureshi warns us that scientific advancement and enlightenment are not necessarily compatible but encourages us that they can be

Professor Alan Lester, Professor of Historical Geography, University of Sussex

An Unnatural History of Extinction

Anyone alive today is among a tiny fraction of the once living: over 90% of species that ever existed are now extinct. How did we come to think of ourselves as survivors in a world where species can vanish forever, or as capable of pushing our planet to the verge of a sixth mass extinction? 
 
Extinction, Sadiah Qureshi shows us, is a surprisingly modern concept – and a phenomenon that’s not as natural as we might think. In Europe until the late eighteenth century, species were considered perfect and unchanging creations of God. Then in the age of revolutions, scientists gathered enough fossil evidence to determine that mammoth bones, for example, were not just large elephants but a lost species that once roamed the Earth alongside ancient humans. Extinction went from being regarded as theologically dangerous to pervasive, and even inevitable. 
 
Yet Vanished shows us that extinction is more than a scientific idea; it’s a political choice that has led to devasting consequences. Europeans and Americans quickly used the notion that extinction was a natural process to justify persecution and genocide, predicting that nations from Newfoundland’s Beothuk to Aboriginal Australians were doomed to die out from imperial expansion. 
 
Exploring the tangled and unnatural histories of extinction and empire, Vanished weaves together pioneering original research and breath-taking storytelling to show us extinction is both an evolutionary process and a human act: one which illuminates our past, and may alter our future.

Sadiah Qureshi

Praise for Vanished

Highly readable and academically rigorous... traces the entanglements of race, empire and colonialism to better understand extinction

Dark, persuasive, detailed, poetic… exquisitely attuned to the (often overlooked) historical and political contexts in which scientific ideas thrive

Groundbreaking

Highly readable and academically rigorous... traces the entanglements of race, empire and colonialism to better understand extinction

Dark, persuasive, detailed, poetic… exquisitely attuned to the (often overlooked) historical and political contexts in which scientific ideas thrive

Groundbreaking

Highly readable and academically rigorous... traces the entanglements of race, empire and colonialism to better understand extinction

Dark, persuasive, detailed, poetic… exquisitely attuned to the (often overlooked) historical and political contexts in which scientific ideas thrive

Groundbreaking

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter