The most prestigious and eagerly anticipated lecture series of the year, the CBC Massey Lectures are being delivered in 2009 by acclaimed anthropologist Wade Davis, author of One River. Described as a “rare combination of scientist, scholar, poet, and passionate defender of all of life’s diversity,” Davis is one of our most authoritative and well-respected cultural anthropologists.

Over the past decade, many of us have been alarmed to learn of the rapidly accelerating extinction of our planet’s diverse flora and fauna. But how many of us know that our human cultural diversity is also going extinct at a shocking rate? Biologists estimate that 18% of mammals and 11% of birds are threatened, while botanists anticipate the loss of 8% of flora. Meanwhile, of the 7,000 languages in the world today, 50% will disappear in our lifetime. Languages are merely the canaries in the coalmine: what of the poetry, songs, knowledge, and ways of seeing encoded in these disappearing voices?

In The Wayfinders, Wade Davis offers a gripping account of this urgent crisis. He leads us on a fascinating tour through a handful of indigenous cultures and worldviews while reminding us of the encroaching dangers posed by unchecked globalization. An enlightening, awe-inspiring, and cautionary look at vanishing cultures and languages from one of the world’s most celebrated and distinguished anthropologists.

Also by Wade Davis is the lovely large pictorial volume from the Smithsonian—which explores this issue more widely and deeply---called Book of Peoples of the World.