Short Synopsis
Pronghorn antelope, gray wolves, bison, coyotes, wild horses, and grizzly bears: less than two hundred years ago these creatures existed in abundance in America's Great Plains. Here, veteran naturalist and outdoorsman Dan Flores draws a vivid portrait of each of these animals in their glory—and tells the harrowing story of what happened to them.

Full Synopsis
America’s Great Plains once possessed one of the grandest wildlife spectacles of the world, equaled only by such places as the Serengeti, the Masai Mara, or the veld of South Africa. Pronghorn antelope, gray wolves, bison, coyotes, wild horses, and grizzly bears: less than two hundred years ago these creatures existed in such abundance that John James Audubon was moved to write, “it is impossible to describe or even conceive the vast multitudes of these animals.”

In a work that is at once a lyrical evocation of that lost splendor and a detailed natural history of these charismatic species of the historic Great Plains, veteran naturalist and outdoorsman Dan Flores draws a vivid portrait of each of these animals in their glory—and tells the harrowing story of what happened to them at the hands of market hunters and ranchers, and ultimately, a federal killing program in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

“A big and haunting history stuffed with big animals and big ideas that reveals the fragility and resilience of the Great Plains ecosystem over the past 10,000 years.” ---Karl Jacoby, author of Crimes against Nature

“Dan Flores has written an engaging and provocative account of ecological change in the Great Plains by tracing the interaction of the large animals and humans in this grassland during the past 13,000 years." ---R. Douglas Hurt, Head Fellow of the Agricultural History Society

"American Serengeti is Dan Flores’s love song to the Great Plains, with each verse a fond embrace of one of its own—grizzlies and bison, pronghorns and coyotes." ---Elliott West, author of The Contested Plains

"Personal, passionate, and scholarly, [Flores’s] essays on pronghorns, coyotes, horses, grizzly bears, bison, and wolves give these ancient, durable animals their historical due." ---Frank Van Nuys, author of Varmints and Victims

“A highly personal book reflecting the vast knowledge of a leading cultural and environmental historian.” ---David Dary, author of The Buffalo Book