Ursula K. Heise's absorbing and eclectic book distinguishes itself from writing about extinction's historical emergence and contemporary urgency. On the cusp of the sixth mass extinction in Earth's history, Imagining Extinction instead presents us with a metanarrative about the various modes, genres, and rhetorics of cultural engagement with biodiversity and species endangerment. Using an array of literary texts, aesthetic artifacts, and discursive interventions drawn from the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Heise poses vital questions about how cultural lenses can shape our understanding of extinction as a scientific and ethico-political challenge. The strong syncretism of approach that characterized her agenda-setting Sense of Place and Sense of Planet (2008) is similarly on offer in this vibrant study. Heise starts by producing fresh accounts of the interchange among cultural spheres, juxtaposing conservation science with popular-scientific writing, fiction, and contemporary art to assess the stakes of conjuring extinction in an elegiac mode....
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