The Destruction of the Bison by Andrew C Isenberg

The Destruction of the Bison by Andrew C Isenberg

The Destruction of the Bison explains the decline of the North American bison population from an estimated 30 million in 1800 to fewer than 1000 a century later. In this wide-ranging, interdisciplinary study, Andrew C. Isenberg argues that the cultural and ecological encounter between Native Americans and Euroamericans in the Great Plains was the central cause of the near extinction of the bison. Drought and the incursion of domestic livestock and exotic species such as horses into the Great Plains all threatened the Western ecosystem, which was further destabilized as interactions between Native Americans and Euroamericans created new types of hunters in both cultures: mounted Indian nomads and white commercial hide hunters. In the early twentieth century, nostalgia about the very cultural strife that first threatened the bison became, ironically, an important impetus to its preservation.

'The Destruction of the Bison is one of those very rare books that manage to be the definite work on a subject and simultaneously profoundly change how we understand that subjectNo one can write about the destruction of America's national mammal - and the peoples who exploited and cared for it - without engaging with Andrew Isenberg's bold masterwork.' Pekka Hämäläinen, University of Oxford
'In the nineteenth century, in the short span of a few decades, the great bison herds that defined the Plains for thousands of years almost disappeared. No book illuminates the causes and consequences of that fateful development so eloquently or concisely as Drew Isenberg's essential, classic study, The Destruction of the Bison.' Louis S. Warren, University of California, Davis

Isenberg, Andrew C.: - Andrew C. Isenberg is Professor of History at Temple University. Isenberg's research interests include environmental history, the history of the North American West, the United States from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century, and the encounter between Euroamericans and natives. He is the author of Mining California: An Ecological History (2005) and the editor of The Nature of Cities: Culture, Landscape, and Urban Space (2006).

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781108816724
ISBN 10	110881672X
Title	The Destruction of the Bison
Author	Andrew C Isenberg
Series	Studies In Environment And History
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Cambridge University Press
Year published	2020-03-26
Number of pages	232
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.