Geography & the Environment
May 2014
As Dead as a Dodo
by Shen Fuyu
Winner of the “China’s Most Beautiful Book Prize” in 2014. Dead As a Dodo tells the stories of 30 species which have already died out or are currently threatened with extinction. The last dodo died in 1681 by gunshot. Mauritius, the last passenger pigeon on earth died in 1914 in the United States in her cage at the Cincinnati Zoo. The animals described in this book are gone, we are still here. After closing the book, everyone will ask: what kind of pain has our behavior brought to the earth? Have we overdrawn our future for the sake of temporary benefits?A lonely human being is a sad human being and every time we kill an animal, we take another step toward global loneliness. Each story in the book is accompanied by beautiful and touching illustrations from the hands of the painter Wei Eternity.
