American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon
American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon
American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon
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Description
Description
"The most promising debut by a nature writer in years . . . a hymn to a complicated, long-standing human-animal relationship."--San Francisco Chronicle A hunt for the American buffalo, an adventurous, fascinating examination of an animal that has haunted the American imagination--from the host of the show MeatEater as seen on Netflix In 2005, Steven Rinella won a lottery permit to hunt for a wild buffalo, or American bison, in the Alaskan wilderness. Despite the odds--there's only a 2 percent chance of drawing the permit, and fewer than 20 percent of those hunters are successful--Rinella managed to kill a buffalo on a snow-covered mountainside and then raft the meat back to civilization while being trailed by grizzly bears and suffering from hypothermia. Throughout these adventures, Rinella found himself contemplating his own place among the 14,000 years' worth of buffalo hunters in North America, as well as the buffalo's place in the American experience. At the time of the Revolutionary War, North America was home to approximately 40 million buffalo, the largest herd of big mammals on the planet, but by the mid-1890s only a few hundred remained. Now that the buffalo is on the verge of a dramatic ecological recovery across the West, Americans are faced with the challenge of how, and if, we can dare to share our land with a beast that is the embodiment of the American wilderness. American Buffalo is a narrative tale of Rinella's hunt. But beyond that, it is the story of the many ways in which the buffalo has shaped our national identity. Rinella takes us across the continent in search of the buffalo's past, present, and future: to the Bering Land Bridge, where scientists search for buffalo bones amid artifacts of the New World's earliest human inhabitants; to buffalo jumps where Native Americans once ran buffalo over cliffs by the thousands; to the Detroit Carbon works, a "bone charcoal" plant that made fortunes in the late 1800s by turning millions of tons of buffalo bones into bone meal, black dye, and fine china; and even to an abattoir turned fashion mecca in Manhattan's Meatpacking District, where a depressed buffalo named Black Diamond met his fate after serving as the model for the American nickel. Rinella's erudition and exuberance, combined with his gift for storytelling, make him the perfect guide for a book that combines outdoor adventure with a quirky blend of facts and observations about history, biology, and the natural world. Both a captivating narrative and a book of environmental and historical significance, American Buffalo tells us as much about ourselves as Americans as it does about the creature who perhaps best of all embodies the American ethos.
About the Author
About the Author
STEVEN RINELLA is the author of The Scavenger's Guide to Haute Cuisine and a correspondent for Outside magazine. His writing has also appeared in The New Yorker, American Heritage, the New York Times, Field & Stream, Men's Journal, and Salon.com. He grew up in Twin Lake, Michigan, and now tries to split his time between Alaska and Brooklyn, New York.
Critical Reviews
Critical Reviews
"Captivating . . . [Rinella is] an engaging, sharp-eyed writer whose style fuses those of John McPhee and Hunter S. Thompson."--Minneapolis Star Tribune "One part Hemingway sparseness, and one part anthropological history of buffalo hunting over the past few thousand years . . . an adventurous and educational tribute to a great American animal."--Men's Journal
"Rinella one-ups his previous book, The Scavenger's Guide to Haute Cuisine, by going after the massive and mythical buffalo. . . . Rinella's tale of tracking buffalo in Alaska is alluringly visceral in its description. His multichapter description of killing, skinning and chopping up a buffalo cow is alternately stomach-turning and riveting. It's easy to understand the allure of hunting, of respecting and living off the land, under Rinella's unsentimental tutelage."--Time "Eloquent, smart and obsessive . . . Rinella is a learned, wry voice in the wilderness."--Time Out New York
"Thrilling."--The Star-Ledger
"A fascinating piece of outdoor writing and a gonzo meditation on the history of the mighty beast in our national life. Rinella's passion for his subject, intelligence and moments of craziness bring to mind another wild American spirit: the early, effective Hunter S. Thompson."--Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
"A rich, engrossing, well-written book, and total brain candy for fact addicts."--Bloomberg "Fascinating . . . a very complex, wonderfully written book."--The Christian Science Monitor "Engaging . . . brings home the satisfactions of one man's self-reliance in an age when little we do alone so directly supports our survival. Too, it's a journey into the snowy north, where the beauty and bounty of a faraway land come powerfully alive."--The Seattle Times
"A sleep-with-your-safety-off narrative of Rinella's quest to shoot a wild bison in Alaska--and a testament to . . . the writer's passion for his subject."--Outside magazine
"Part hunting memoir, part trivia-soaked history of the buffalo--as if pulled straight from the brainpans of Steve Irwin and Ken Jennings."--Details
"Brims with . . . historical tidbits . . . the breadth of Rinella's knowledge is impressive."--Rocky Mountain News
"Rinella's complex weave of guilt and pride, of understanding and qualified embrace of historical necessity, make this book an education not just in what we put in our mouths but in why and how people like and unlike us have done so--a lesson for the head, the heart and the stomach."--San Francisco Chronicle
"Rinella's understated prose shows great flexibility, and he is by turns moving and downright funny. An experienced outdoorsman and hunter, Rinella writes with authority about the process of turning a living creature into steak, and easily renders an enormous amount of historical and scientific information into a thoroughly engaging narrative."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A fluently written celebration of life."--Kirkus Reviews
"Rinella one-ups his previous book, The Scavenger's Guide to Haute Cuisine, by going after the massive and mythical buffalo. . . . Rinella's tale of tracking buffalo in Alaska is alluringly visceral in its description. His multichapter description of killing, skinning and chopping up a buffalo cow is alternately stomach-turning and riveting. It's easy to understand the allure of hunting, of respecting and living off the land, under Rinella's unsentimental tutelage."--Time "Eloquent, smart and obsessive . . . Rinella is a learned, wry voice in the wilderness."--Time Out New York
"Thrilling."--The Star-Ledger
"A fascinating piece of outdoor writing and a gonzo meditation on the history of the mighty beast in our national life. Rinella's passion for his subject, intelligence and moments of craziness bring to mind another wild American spirit: the early, effective Hunter S. Thompson."--Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
"A rich, engrossing, well-written book, and total brain candy for fact addicts."--Bloomberg "Fascinating . . . a very complex, wonderfully written book."--The Christian Science Monitor "Engaging . . . brings home the satisfactions of one man's self-reliance in an age when little we do alone so directly supports our survival. Too, it's a journey into the snowy north, where the beauty and bounty of a faraway land come powerfully alive."--The Seattle Times
"A sleep-with-your-safety-off narrative of Rinella's quest to shoot a wild bison in Alaska--and a testament to . . . the writer's passion for his subject."--Outside magazine
"Part hunting memoir, part trivia-soaked history of the buffalo--as if pulled straight from the brainpans of Steve Irwin and Ken Jennings."--Details
"Brims with . . . historical tidbits . . . the breadth of Rinella's knowledge is impressive."--Rocky Mountain News
"Rinella's complex weave of guilt and pride, of understanding and qualified embrace of historical necessity, make this book an education not just in what we put in our mouths but in why and how people like and unlike us have done so--a lesson for the head, the heart and the stomach."--San Francisco Chronicle
"Rinella's understated prose shows great flexibility, and he is by turns moving and downright funny. An experienced outdoorsman and hunter, Rinella writes with authority about the process of turning a living creature into steak, and easily renders an enormous amount of historical and scientific information into a thoroughly engaging narrative."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A fluently written celebration of life."--Kirkus Reviews
Publishing Information
Publishing Information
Publisher:
Random House
Pub date:
2009-09-15
Length:
304 pages
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