This book was a difficult one to review because there was much to love about it, but also much to be disappointed by. In this book, Menno Schilthuizen does a wonderful job going over the many facets of how plants and animals deal with human impacts, whether they evolve to our pollution, be it chemical, light, or noise, if they adapt to survive death traps like cars, or if they simply do a better job blending into the changing surroundings. He delves further into how they evolve, including small changes to their physical sizes, alterations of chromosomes, new coloration, and novel behavioral patterns (genetic or learned).

At the same time, Menno does not acknowledge what invasive species really do to our urban and rural ecosystems. It is a topic completely ignored. A single invasive species can, and has, made several native species go extinct while providing little. He also states that invasives are often best-suited to adapting to urban-living, but ignores why this is so-that they merely benefit from a lack of predation and typically provide little benefit to the urban ecosystem. If he wants cities to be the purview of a very select few species, then invasives will do quite nicely. For the ecosystems to adapt to those invasives, however, when they become full contributors to the food web, they will need thousands of years to fully integrate them. Thus, while embracing invasives may seem like a chic embrace of the future, it is a really bleak omen for most species. In conclusion, the book is wonderful at explaining what is happening, but is highly problematic at its promotion of the McDonaldization of the world’s ecosystems.