Elizabeth Kolbert (born July 6, 1961) is an American author and journalist. Since 1999, she has been a staff writer forThe New Yorker, where she has covered politics and theenvironment.[1]
Kolbert has traveled across the globe, visiting scientists and researchers to discuss global warming and climate change. Her work has taken her to Alaska, Hawaii, Greenland, Australia, and Iceland in the discovery of science and the impacts of human life to the planet.[6]
Kolbert spent her early childhood inthe Bronx. Her family then relocated toLarchmont, where she remained until 1979.
Kolbert’s grandfather was a refugee from Nazi Germany. Kolbert recounts that through his life, he had been a fan of authorKarl May’s writing, specifically on the West. Later, when he had immigrated to the US, Kolbert’s grandfather would take Kolbert’s mother and
Yale University
siblings out West. Kolbert’s mother continued this tradition with her kids.[7] “I thought I, too, should go have adventures out West.”
Kolbert’s father, was an eye doctor and her mother, Marlene Kolbert, was a stay-at-home mom. Although she stayed active within their community, participating on the school board and their local politics.[7]
Jakobshavn icefjord in West Greenland, one of the places Kolbert visited on her travelsClimeworks, one of the companies Kolbert visited while writingUnder a White Sky
Elizabeth Kolbert started working forThe New York Times as astringer in Germany in 1983. "I’d worked on the high-school paper; I’d worked on the college paper. I’ve always been attracted to journalism. And I wrote a bunch of stuff that actually made it into the travel section ofThe New York Times. And then I came back and got a really entry-level job."[7] In 1985, she went to work for the Metro desk. Kolbert served as the Times' Albany bureau chief from 1988 to 1991 and wrote the Metro Matters column from 1997 to 1998. She published several profiles in theNew York Times magazine on figures such as former GovernorMario M. Cuomo[8] and former U.S. SenatorAlfonse D’Amato.[9]
Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change was published byBloomsbury Publishing in 2006. This book was one of Kolbert’s first major publications focusing on climate change and the environment.Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change was noted as one ofThe New York Times 100 Notable Books of the year in 2006.[21] In the book, Kolbert travels around the world to document how climate change is significantly affecting the environment and make these scientific developments accessible to a wide audience. In her writing Kolbert uses contrast to emphasize the severity of our ecological crisis and discusses ancient civilizations as a parallel to our modern world.[12]
The now extinct Great Auk
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History was published in 2014 and was Kolbert’s breakthrough in the writing and journalism world.
Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future focuses on the various kinds of environmental crises created by theAnthropocene and different degrees of technological solutions available to humanity to address them. Nevertheless, the book is also critical of full-blown techno-solutionism. The title refers to the most extremeclimate change mitigation strategy,solar geoengineering, designed to reflect sunlight from the earth. Throughout the book she explores how atechnological fix for one problem can lead to other problems, while acknowledging the important role these technologies might play. During an interview with Red Canary Magazine, discussingUnder a White Sky, Kolbert says this when asked how people should think about nature, “I’m really interested in the book in this extraordinary moment that we live in, where it is increasingly difficult to draw the line between humanity and nature, because we’re such a powerful force on planet Earth.”[23]
H is for Hope: Climate Change from A to Z was published in 2024. Illustrated by artist Wesley Allsbrook, the book documents the history of climate change along with our uncertain future in twenty-six essays for each letter of the alphabet.
In an interview with Grist, led by Kate Yoder, when asked about her decision on structure in her bookH is for Hope: Climate Change from A to Z, Kolbert stated:
Well, this book is my attempt to do that. I can’t give you the poster child for climate change that’s going to change everyone’s perceptions of it, or the story that’s going to finally cut through all the BS. Many approaches have been taken, some are more successful than others, but we still seem stuck. And I was really trying in this book to get around that problem, or fool around with that problem, that the traditional narratives don’t seem to work.[24]
Kolbert’s most recent book,Life on a Little-Known Planet: Dispatches from a Changing World, published in 2025, brings a lot of Kolbert’s works together. It highlights some of her most impactful writing and articles she’s published throughout the years.Life on a Little-Known Planet was recognized as one of the best books of the year by theWashington Post,Time,Esquire,Smithsonian Magazine,Publishers Weekly,Kirkus Reviews, andLibrary Journal. The book is a collection of Kolbert's stories on topics ranging from the rights of nature to the "insect apocalypse."
Kolbert resides inWilliamstown, Massachusetts, with her husband, John Kleiner, and three sons (Ned, Matthew, and Aaron).[25] Kolbert and her husband Kleiner married February 9, 1991 in Albany, New York. Her husband Kleiner graduated from Amherst College with a master’s degree from Cornell in Physics. He works as an English professor.
Kolbert, Elizabeth & Francis Spufford, eds. (2007).The ends of the Earth : an anthology of the finest writing on the Arctic and the Antarctic. 1st U.S. ed. New York: Bloomsbury.
Kolbert, Elizabeth, ed. (2009).The best American science and nature writing 2009. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Elizabeth Kolbert, "The Waste Land" (review of Lina Zeldovich,The Other Dark Matter: The Science and Business of Turning Waste into Wealth and Health, University of Chicago Press, 259 pp.; and Jo Handelsman,A World Without Soil: The Past, Present, and Precarious Future of the Earth Beneath Our Feet, Yale University Press, 262 pp.),The New York Review of Books, vol. LXIX, no. 3 (24 February 2022), pp. 4, 6.
— (August 22, 2022)."The political climate". The Talk of the Town. Comment.The New Yorker.98 (25):11–12.[q]
Elizabeth Kolbert, "Spored to Death" (review of Emily Monosson,Blight: Fungi and the Coming Pandemic, Norton, 253 pp.; andAlison Pouliot,Meetings with Remarkable Mushrooms: Forays with Fungi Across Hemispheres, University of Chicago Press, 278 pp.),The New York Review of Books, vol. LXX, no.14 (21 September 2023), pp. 41–42. "Fungi sicken us and fungi sustain us. In either case, we ignore them at our peril." (p. 42.)
^Online version is titled "Why facts don't change our minds".
^Online version is titled "James Turrell makes light physical".
^Online version is titled "Climate change and the new age of extinction".
^Online version is titled "The art of building artificial glaciers".
^Online version is titled "What will another decade of climate crisis bring?".
^Title in the online table of contents is "The climate expert who delivered news no one wanted to hear". Originally published in the June 29, 2009 issue.
^A review ofMartin J. Sherwin'sGambling with armageddon : nuclear roulette from Hiroshima to the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York : Knopf, 2020). Includes information from recently declassified sources.
^Online version is titled "Have we already been visited by aliens?".
^Online version is titled "The deep sea is filled with treasure, but it comes at a price".
^Online version is titled "How did fighting climate change become a partisan issue?".
^Online version is titled "The Little-Known World of Caterpillars".
^Online version is titled "How plastics are poisoning us".
"Focus 580; The Climate of Man," 2005-05-27, WILL Illinois Public Media, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed June 7, 2021.
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