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Title: The Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History of North America and Its Peoples by Tim Flannery ISBN: 0-8021-3888-8 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: May, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.45 (20 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Wonderful information; offers a far-fetched solution
Comment: THE ETERNAL FRONTIER is a fantastic book for giving a cursory ecological history of North America, and it presents the information so fluidly that it's easy to retain even for the layman. A year after reading it, I still think of the shallow ocean that once covered the midwest; of the armadillo returning northward from Mexico to reclaim what had once been its territory. Flannery's assertion that North American ecology has been out of balance since the clovis hunters is well supported also. But I found his suggestion for amending this crisis to be genuinely silly, almost to the point that it hurt the overall book. He believes it may be possible to re-introduce large mammals--namely elephants--to North America, thereby re-establishing the balance that existed during the era of the mastadon. This sort of plan exists in such a far-fetched dream world that it undermines the very sober treatise that has led to it. (I just don't see herds of elephants making it across I-80 in their southward migration.) Flannery handles a great deal of information in this book, and his ability to work with the large scale of time is impressive. But the book does overreach in its attempt to solve a thousand year-old problem in North America.
Rating: 3
Summary: Too much in too little a space.
Comment: Although I see by the reviews that most people were thoroughly entranced with The Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History of North America and Its Peoples, I really had mixed feelings about the book. It definitely attempts to accomplish way too much within the limited confines of its 357 pages of text, and by doing so cheats some topics while over indulging others.
First and foremost, like Africa: Biography of a Continent by John Reader, the book starts out to be a 'life story' of the North American continent. Unlike Reader's work, which sets the stage for the human drama by discussing the geology of the continent and the succession of biological eras that have characterized the land, The Eternal Frontier begins with the asteroid impact that purportedly brought about the demise of the dinosaurs. In part this may be due to the very real consideration that there wasn't too much of a North American continent other than the Canadian Shield and a pair of island arcs prior to this time. However, I have the distinct impression it's also due to the fact that the intended audience has more interest in dinosaurs and Pleistocene megafauna than it does in brachiopods, trilobites and crinoids'myself being perhaps one of the few exceptions.
From this beginning, the author describes the successions of flora and fauna that have arisen indigenously or by migration through the ages. I have no quarrel with that approach, having studied paleontology as my major focus while working on a bachelor's in geology during the 1980s. Unfortunately, these chapters become something of a simple catalogue of species that have come and gone, not because their individual stories aren't interesting, but because they require more space to tell than the author has given them. I found more interesting his occasional digressions into the personalities of the various fossil collectors of the early and mid 19th Century and into the few species he does describe more fully, things like the fact that the redwood tree species had witnessed the age of the dinosaurs and that the squirrel, like the horse and the camel, is an American indigene, but one unlike the other two that has not successfully invaded Eurasia or Australia. I also found the concept of the one way door between Eurasia and North America of interest as well as the weather magnifying effect of the north-south orientation of the continent's mountain ranges.
The middle portion of the book describes the successive waves of human immigration. This section especially deserves more space than it was given, as those who have argued vehemently over the issue of first date of colonization could tell one. Even as a eulogy to the lost Native American cultures, it lacks something. This story has a grandeur that deserves a venue of its own. It is however interesting to think of the first humans as disturbing the predator-prey balance by being more efficient than any other predator hitherto, but that debate is also a subject of much controversy, and Dr. Flannery gives it rather short shift. It is anything but decided.
At the risk of seeming a defensive Ugly American, I also take exception to the disparaging comments on the settling of the continent. I agree, it was a period of time fraught with a ghastly disregard for the lives, well-being and property of American indiginous populations, and the total disregard for ecological sustainability. However, by literarily isolating these offenses to immigrants to this continent in particular, he appears to ignore facts that Jared Diamond has pointed out in a better balanced account. In Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, Diamond makes it clear that a lot goes into changes of this kind, and it seems to take place all over the globe with equally devastating effects. I can't help but wonder what the Australian aboriginal population might make of Dr. Flannery's elegant concern over the dismal fate of the American Indian.
Probably the most interesting portion of the book is that which discusses the possible reason for the persistent lack of concern by the powers that be in the US over devastation of environment. While we in the US decry the fate of the Brazilian rainforests and the demise of the African megafauna, we seem unusually blind to the loss of our own forests and wildlife and unwilling to sign accords that the rest of the world deem needful to save the environment worldwide. Since we can't do anything to change our great grandfathers' appalling treatment of the American Indian, but we can do something about the preservation of predator-prey ratios in our parks, about the amount of land we set aside unmolested in the name of capitalism, and to subsidize those 3rd world countries that are faced with damaging their environment or perishing, I think it behooves us to get a little more involved in the issues.
I found the book tried to cover way too much. It might be a good place to get started on a number of topics, but I think that other books might offer more on any given subject.
Rating: 5
Summary: Fascinating natural history of North America
Comment: In The Eternal Frontier, Tim Flannery starts his ecological history of North America with the major asteroid impact near the Yucatan 65 million years ago. He writes of the catastrophe with great verve, and the book becomes quite a page-turner. From there he moves forward through time to the present showing the changes in climate and habitat, and then how the advent of humans in North America impacted its ecology. I grew up in Wisconsin, and I had no idea what a distinct climate and ecology the central portion of North America has compared to the other continents. Because the major mountain ranges (Sierra Nevada, Rockies and Appalachians) run from north to south compared to east to west (the Alps, Urals and Himalayas), North America has a "climatic trumpet" where hot air comes up from the equator in the summer producing near tropical summers even in Wisconsin, and then cold air comes down from the arctic in winter producing a sub-arctic winter. I hadn't realized that Europe and Asia don't have areas with such major swings in temperature as the norm. Flannery also explains how this trumpet will cause global warning or an ice age to be most severe in North America compared to the other continents. Flannery presents and explores in the latter portion of his book many theses on how he thinks North Americans need to take care of their continent so that life as we know it is not jeopardized. Many may think his predictions more dire than need be, but all are worth some careful thought, and many are new ideas (such as the need for large carnivores) that most people would not have thought of. All in all, The Eternal Frontier is a thoughtful, well-written and surprisingly exciting book.
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Title: The Future Eaters: An Ecological History of the Australian Lands and People by Tim F. Flannery ISBN: 0802139434 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: November, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: A Gap in Nature: Discovering the World's Extinct Animals by Tim F. Flannery, Peter Schouten ISBN: 0871137976 Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press Pub. Date: 07 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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Title: Throwim' Way Leg: Tree-Kangaroos, Possums, and Penis Gourds by Tim F. Flannery ISBN: 0802136656 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: March, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Ghosts of Evolution: Nonsensical Fruit, Missing Partners, and Other Ecological Anachronisms by Connie Barlow, Paul Martin ISBN: 0465005527 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 19 March, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
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Title: The Third Chimpanzee : The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal by Jared M. Diamond ISBN: 0060984031 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 02 December, 1992 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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