In the Shadow of the Sabertooth: A Renegade Naturalist Considers Global Warming, the First Ameri-cans and the Terrible Beasts of the Pleistocene

In this charming ramble, Peacock (Grizzly Years) distills his decades as a "wandering naturalist" into tales of wilderness adventures, ruminations on the geological history, and conjecture regarding the emergence of homo sapiens in North America. Acknowledging the scarcity of available scientific data, he catalogues up-to-date archeological information and situates the various theories of human migra-tion from Eurasia. Peacock is most interested in contemplating the ways early North Americans coped with the dangerous megafauna of the era, and a childhood fascination with sifting for arrowheads dovetails nicely with sections dedicated to the development of the Clovis Point, a spear tip capable of piercing mammoth hides. Although well-studied, this is not an anthropology lecture. Instead, Peacock draws extensively on experiences as hunter and hunted in Montana and the Arctic, and takes us on an Inuit polar bear hunt and a trek through the waterless Sonoran desert. Interspersed with journal notes, memories of unmapped journeys, and an imagined day in the life of the first Americans, Peacock makes his case for preserving the land that reminds humans of our insignificance in the face of nature. (June)