293 pages
Published 2022
Read from February 10 to February 13
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
The extinction of the dinosaurs is, to me, far and away the least interesting thing about them. That's why I avoided this book last year, when I was speeding through the likes of Beasts Before Us and Otherlands. When I learned that this book devoted much of its length to what happened in the aftermath of Chicxulub, however, I had to get my hands on it. Not nearly enough books deal with the scraggly process of ecological recovery and strange new mammalian evolution in the Paleocene.
Unexpectedly, the bulk of The Last Days is told in a speculative, dino’s-eye-view style, placing it closer in tone and vibe to Raptor Red than I anticipated. Black’s prose is what I’d consider middling pop science journalism—an improvement over Steve Brusatte’s The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, but not nearly as poetic and evocative as Thomas Halliday’s Otherlands. Black’s best writing is also her most personal and vulnerable, exploring the parallels between the K-Pg extinction and her own personal transitions. As someone writing my own chapbook on the themes of paleontology, gender, and personal prehistories, I wish more of The Last Days had that same depth.
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