This is the sort of book you’d prefer didn’t have so many pages – the more there are, the less full our world is of great species. Those that have sadly gone from our lives should, and do, make us think harder about saving the rest, though – the book covers well known species like Dodo and Great Auk, as well as the likes of Spectacled Cormorant, with only seven stuffed specimens and two incomplete skeletons left on the planet. Other losses covered here include Heath Hen, Arabian Ostrich and Ivory-billed Woodpecker. There are many more lost species in here which we should never forget.

Bird Watching magazine

<i>Lost Animals, Disappearing Worlds: Stories of Extinction</i> by Allen profiles the great auk, passenger pigeon, and Saint Helena earwig, among other extinct creatures, exploring how their disappearances affected their ecosystems and provide insight into humanity’s relationship with nature.

Publishers Weekly

This beautifully illustrated book serves as much as a simulacrum of private, deeply personal grief and loss as it is a repository of stories and histories. Allen has created a deliberate, well-documented archive . . . Allen revivifies extinct animals so that, briefly, they seem to breathe . . . By giving voices and representation to 31 extinct species, Allen shows how these creatures lived and how to listen wholeheartedly to them and the other species (estimates range from 20,000 to two million) that went extinct during the last century.

Library Journal