This book is pitched at an educated general readership and is written in an autobiographical first-person memoir style. Erwin conveys a powerful sense of story for this great whodunit mystery and lay readers will find it a good read. I did however find the level of self-aggrandisement in the book a little hard to swallow and there are several specific denigrating personal comments that I am surprised the editor allowed. Erwin also denigrates scientific rigour to ‘technical trivia’ (p. 264) where he also suggests that most geologists would find this rigour too pedantic.

However, Chapter 2 is an excellent introduction to possible causes for the end-Permian mass extinction and invites the reader to make up his own mind after reading all the arguments. Chapter 3 held great promise and interest. Unfortunately it is riddled with scientific factual errors. For example, the species Hindeodus parvus (first appearance of which is used to define the base of the Triassic and hence the P–T boundary) is not ‘now Isarsica parvus’ (p. 74). Some authors place this species in the genus Isarcicella but most, as in fact Erwin himself does throughout this book, would retain this in Hindeodus. Erwin even gets the generic name wrong as ‘Isarcica’ (specific name for Isarcicella isarcica).

Chapter 4 focuses on vital timing aspects. Erwin unfortunately embroils himself in ongoing disputes relating to the ages of ash beds in boundary sections in China. He promotes the contribution of himself and his colleagues whilst denigrating other equally important parallel studies and clings on to the outdated and inaccurate Bowring 1998 P–T boundary age and timescale. Bowring has now acknowledged that his initial dates at Meishan were too young and now agrees with the Mundil et al. (Reference Mundil, Ludwig, Metcalfe and Renne2004) age of 252.6 ± 0.2 for the mass extinction (Crowley et al. Reference Crowley, Bowring, Shen, Wang, Cao and Jin2006), which is also accepted by the IUGS/ICS Permian and Triassic Subcommissions. Chapter 5 explores how physiology of organisms may have dictated their demise or survival in the extinction and what kinds of organisms were particularly affected. Again this chapter suffers from lack of attention to detail (e.g. Guang Rong Shi's name misspelled as ‘Guirong Shi’).

Erwin rightly points out in Chapter 6 that the end-Permian extinction did have a major effect on land with major implications for constraining suggested causes. His description of the Karoo, Rubidge family, and history of vertebrate studies are a delight to read. Chapter 7 focuses on the changing chemistry in oceans and atmosphere and for me was the best chapter in the book. The author discusses the important question as to whether changes in the carbon cycle reflect the causes of extinction or are the result of the extinction itself. Chapter 8 is the keystone chapter of this whodunit book. Erwin dogmatically states that the rapidity of extinction ‘is beyond doubt’ and ‘probably occurred in less than a few hundred thousand years’. We need more high-precision and accurate data to confirm this. Erwin does a good job of assessing current front-runner causative mechanisms and then considers Siberian massive volcanism and impact as the two main contenders, rejecting impact as implausible, and favouring the massive volcanism scenario which has been championed by Paul Renne and others for many years. I was somewhat disappointed that the author did not pursue his multiple-cause scenario a little more, for I believe this is perhaps where the ultimate answer may lie. Chapters 9 and 10 are something of an anticlimax but do contain useful discussions of important issues of delayed recovery.

With similar readership target, focus, style and structure, Erwin's book begs comparison with Benton (Reference Benton2003). While covering similar ground, the books are complementary in providing different perspectives on one of science's greatest unsolved mysteries. I thoroughly recommend both to a general readership, but for the specialist Earth Scientist I think Dr Erwin's book needs tightening up in the second edition before it will appeal.