After reading The Sixth Extinction and Six Degrees, I became interested in getting a better understanding of the big five mass extinctions of the past – in particular the « mother of all extinctions », the Permian–Triassic extinction event, 252 million years ago.
There are several science books on that topic, such as When Life Nearly Died, by Michael Benton.
I got my hands on Under A Green Sky, by Peter D. Ward, which I am currently reading. I am looking forward to tackling other works by this researcher, such as Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe (2003) or The Medea Hypothesis (2009).