Great Plains: America's Lingering Wild

The increasingly bi-coastal citizenry of the U.S. and Canada know less and less of the great central plains of the North American steppe, but this engrossing book from photographer and naturalist Forsberg, with ecological and geographical essays by O'Brien and Wishart, fills that need in overflowing excess. Forsberg's photography is spectacular, capturing the wide-open spaces of locales like the South Dakota Badlands and the fluid movement of its wildlife. As Wishart points out, the Great Plains are far from flat, comprised of rugged river valleys, outcrops of old volcanoes, glacial potholes and buffalo wallows, and formerly-vast marshlands. Univ. of Nebraska geography professor Wishart contributes historical and geographic overviews of three major ecological regions: the Tallgrass Prairie, the Northern Plains and the Southern Plains. The authors also look at the history of cross-continent exploration by the Spanish and the French, as well as 18th century fur traders who traversed the Rockies decades before Lewis and Clark. Author O'Brien (Buffalo for the Broken Heart) provides vivid, precise, and emotional essays that describe the ecological present and the hope for future developments in grasslands restoration. Wonderful maps of the entire Great Plains and individual regions add a great deal to this informative overview, making it a coffee table book worth studying.