The Eternal Frontier : an Ecological History Of North America And Its Peoples
Sixty-five million years ago, a meteor six miles wide smashed into the Gulf of Mexico, ending the age of dinosaurs and devastating the North American continent. Starting with this catastrophic event, The Eternal Frontier recounts the extraordinary ecological history of North America, showing how the continent originally came into being and eventually transformed into the landscape we know today. This sweeping, multidisciplinary book is history on an epic scale. Tim Flannery, a world-renowned paleontologist, traces the postmeteor rebirth of plants, animals, climate, and landforms. He describes a time when rain forests flourished in Greenland and when giant long-necked camels and fat aquatic rhinos thrived in North America's golden age. He explores the massive changes wrought by the ice ages and shows how geological and climatic forces shaped both the autumn foliage in New England and the cacti in the Sonoran Desert. As the story moves across vast distances of time and geography, we eventually witness the impact of the human race. Flannery imagines the first humans to have immigrated 14,000 years ago, after the recession of the last ice age, and he explains how the pioneering Clovis hunters exterminated an ice-age fauna, including enormous mammoths and mastodons and half-ton lions. The story continues right up to the present, covering the deforestation of the Northeast, the decimation of the buffalo, and other facets of the impact of frontier settlement and the development of modern industry and commerce. The Eternal Frontier is science writing at its best, combining an enormous wealth of fascinating information with engaging prose that will be accessible to readers of any background
eBook, English, 2015
Grove/Atlantic, Inc., [Place of publication not identified], 2015
1 online resource
9780802191090, 0802191096
948040753
Intro; International Acclaim for Tim Flannery's The Eternal Frontier; Half Title; Other Books By The Author; Title; Copyright; Dedication; Conversion Table; Contents; Map; Introduction; Act 1. In Which America is Created and Undone; 1. Ground Zero; 2. The Reordering of North America; 3. Of Hellbenders and Hoofed Creatures; Act 2. In Which America Becomes a Tropical Paradise; 4. First Contacts; 5. The Bridge Over Greenland; Act 3. In Which America Becomes a Land of Immigrants; 6. A Fatal Configuration; 7. La Grande Coupure; 8. A Golden Age; 9. Gateway to the Present 10. United Lands of America11. Laurentide; 12. Visit to a New World; Act 4. In Which America is Discovered; 13. A New World; 14. The Black Hole Theory of Extinction; 15. Massacring the Mammoth, Dismembering; 16. The New American Fauna; 17. The Making of the Buffalo; 18. The Rise of Cultures; 19. The Taming of Teosinte; Act 5. In Which America Conquers the World; 20. Alternative Americas; 21. English Colonies All; 22. Conceived in Liberty; 23. The Fatal Impact; 24. America Under the Gun; 25. The Making of a Giant; 26. What's Home on the Range?; 27. Reinventing America; Notes; Bibliography
Title from resource description page (Recorded Books, viewed April 25, 2016)
public.ebookcentral.proquest.com Click here to view book
ebookcentral.proquest.com View Full Text