Books by Sadiah Qureshi
“It looks at the idea of extinction, which we take for granted now, and at a time when extinction was first becoming something that people talked about—in the post-Darwinian age, when we realised that there were life forms on Earth that weren’t with us any more, and the discovery—although I hate the word discovery—of bones that didn’t match anything on Earth that they knew. Those findings were revelations that made people rethink their relationship with the environment. She documents this in a compelling and very compassionate way. She also writes about its coincidence with the colonial project by European powers, and how this new paradigm of extinction, the idea of extinction, in a way made it okay for colonial powers to exterminate groups of people unlike them.” Read more...
The Best Popular Science Books of 2025: The Royal Society Book Prize
Sandra Knapp, Biologist
Interviews where books by Sadiah Qureshi were recommended
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1
Our Brains, Our Selves: What a Neurologist’s Patients Taught Him About the Brain
by Masud Husain -
2
Music As Medicine: How We Can Harness Its Therapeutic Power
by Daniel Levitin -
3
Your Life Is Manufactured: How We Make Things, Why It Matters and How We Can Do It Better
by Tim Minshall -
4
The Forbidden Garden of Leningrad: A True Story of Science and Sacrifice in a City under Siege
by Simon Parkin -
5
Vanished: An Unnatural History of Extinction
by Sadiah Qureshi -
6
Ends of the Earth: Journeys to the Polar Regions in Search of Life, the Cosmos, and our Future
by Neil Shubin
The Best Popular Science Books of 2025: The Royal Society Book Prize, recommended by Sandra Knapp
The Best Popular Science Books of 2025: The Royal Society Book Prize, recommended by Sandra Knapp
Every year, the judges for the Royal Society Book Prize search for the most informative and most readable new books on scientific subjects. In 2025, their shortlist of the best popular science books includes a history of extinction in the colonial world, and the heartrending story of the struggle to save the world’s first seed bank during the Siege of Leningrad. We spoke to the botanist Dr Sandra Knapp, chair of the judging panel.
