What We Are Reading Today: Lost Animals: Extinction and the Photographic Record

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Updated 23 September 2021
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What We Are Reading Today: Lost Animals: Extinction and the Photographic Record

Author: Errol Fuller

A photograph of an extinct animal evokes a greater feeling of loss than any painting ever could. Often black and white or tinted sepia, these remarkable images have been taken mainly in zoos or wildlife parks, and in some cases depict the last known individual of the species.
Lost Animals is a unique photographic record of extinction, presented by a world authority on vanished animals. Richly illustrated throughout, this handsome book features photographs dating from around 1870 to as recently as 2004, the year that witnessed the demise of the Hawaiian Po’ouli. From a mother Thylacine and her pups to birds such as the Heath Hen and the Carolina Parakeet, Errol Fuller tells the story of each animal, explains why it became extinct, and discusses the circumstances surrounding the photography.
Covering 28 extinct species, Lost Animals includes familiar examples like the last Passenger Pigeon, Martha, and one of the last Ivory-billed Woodpeckers, photographed as it peers quizzically at the hat of one of the biologists who has just ringed it.


What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Disease of Boredom’ by Josefa Ros Velasco

Updated 01 February 2026
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Disease of Boredom’ by Josefa Ros Velasco

Boredom visits all of us at some point. Sometimes it is fleeting. Other times it is deep, lasting, or profound. We even experience it in groups.

Boredom can be so intolerable that some are willing to do almost anything just to escape it. In this provocative and eloquently argued book, Josefa Ros Velasco invites us to listen to the voice of boredom, explore the reasons behind it, and allow it to guide our actions and return us to a place of satisfaction.

She shows how boredom is a phenomenon that torments us when reality does not meet our expectations.