Book Review: "American Serengeti" by Dan Flores

 It's been a while since I did a book review! I haven't been reading as much because of time shortages, but I thought it would be good to get back to it while the weather is still cold. "American Serengeti" by Dan Flores is a book I first heard about on The Meateater podcast (which I highly recommend!) when the author was featured on the show. If you're considering getting this book or his "Coyote America" I'd recommend getting this book first. His chapter on coyotes will give you a solid idea of what to expect in the other book along with tons more info/stories on other species. 

The book gives a really cool description of what the great plains looked like at different times in the past. During the Pleistocene, at the end of the Pleistocene, before European contact, during Spanish rule, and during the American expansion to the 20th century. I really liked the accounts from early explorers as they first encountered the plains and all the wildlife that resided there. It's really interesting to think about how elk and grizzlies were great plains animals, instead of how we think of them now as mountain dwellers. 

In the chapter about bison it cites William Temple Hornaday's efforts to collect a specimen for the Natural History Museum and his scathing views on market hunting that makes me curious about Hornaday's memoirs. When Flores talks about the near extinction of bison, he explores the "perfect storm" of factors that led to the huge decline. He also dismantled the often cited conspiracy theory that claimed the US Government exterminated the animal to help remove the Native Americans from the plains. There's also the idea of establishing a Great Plains Reserve that would re-create the plains like Lewis and Clark would've encountered.

I could definitely go on, but suffice it to say that I highly recommend this book! Each chapter highlights a different, iconic, species of the Great Plains and gives a history of our first written accounts up to the present day. 

"This place was deja-vu for me not from some past life, but from the minds of others, who had me know what a magical world the Great Plains once had been." pg. 183

Buy the book here:

https://www.amazon.com/American-Serengeti-Animals-Great-Plains-ebook/dp/B01EM0YTUU