Vanished

Reviews / Votes

Highly readable and academically rigorous... traces the entanglements of race, empire and colonialism to better understand extinction -- Maya Goodfellow * Guardian * Dark, persuasive, detailed, poetic... exquisitely attuned to the (often overlooked) historical and political contexts in which scientific ideas thrive -- Anjana Ahuja * Financial Times * Qureshi's definitive account demonstrates that histories of extinction, empire, race and genocide must be written and read together... Acknowledging extinction's unnatural history may help us choose otherwise -- Helen Anne Curry * TLS * Groundbreaking -- Andrew Robinson * Nature * Qureshi's rigorous, fascinating narrative traces how understanding the regrettable impermanence of species such as the dodo and the Tasmanian tiger was reformulated, by dull minds in powerful places, into a justification for exploitation * Telegraph Greatest Books of 2025 * A poignant, compassionate exploration of the tangled and unnatural histories of extinction and empire. Professor Qureshi skilfully interweaves fascinating original research and compelling storytelling to show us that extinction is both an evolutionary process and a human act: one which illuminates our past, and may alter our future * Forbes * Both authoritative and readable, panoramic in its scope and incisive in its argument... a truly original, challenging and consequential book -- Gary Younge Illuminating and disturbing in equal measure. A poignant and powerfully written account of the intellectual revolution that birthed the concept of extinction; a concept deployed to both justify and animate colonialism and even extermination. A vital and important book -- David Olusoga A marvellous, troubling, moving and important book lit with hope, Vanished is an intellectually acute history of both the idea and the reality of extinction. In a series of fascinating examples ranging from the fates of entire peoples to the remains of a single bird in a museum, Qureshi illumines how our ideas of extinction have been forged and shaped by myriad things, from the intellectual debates of eighteenth-century naturalists to the brutal history of colonialism and the political context of the Cold War. I learned so much from Vanished and am so grateful for it -- Helen Macdonald, author of <i> H is for Hawk </i> A compelling homage to living and extinct beings, Qureshi's masterpiece is a superbly written, urgent and heart racing volume. Unweaving the threads of centuries of teleological explanations, imperial scientific approaches and offering a new path to understanding mass extinction is a stroke of genius. Vanished is enthralling, devastating and yet empowering -- Olivette Otele, author of <i> African Europeans </i>