Rating: 
Summary: Frontier fallacies
Review: Long taught in American schools, "Manifest destiny" was the slogan explaining continental occupation. This concept was given philosophic definition by historian Frederick Jackson Turner at the end of the 19th Century. Although Turner fell into disrepute in the liberal 1960s, Tim Flannery has resurrected him as the voice best expressing the "frontier dream" of unlimited expansion. and the environment in which it formed. More important for our future, Flannery shows how this attitude persists and is expanding around the planet. This remarkable synopsis of a continent's restoration presents a vividly detailed, compelling read of our past, present and future prospects. Flannery chronicles the changes in climate, geography and evolution's experiments leading to today's conditions. Flannery opens with a vivid account of the great catastrophe signalling the extinction of the dinosaurs. The wandering rockball that slammed into the remnants of the Bearpaw Sea 65 million years ago reset the evolutionary clock. Because of its position above the target site, North America became a hotbed of evolutionary diversity after the collision. A setting dominated by North-South running mountain ranges [where East-West is the usual pattern elsewhere] gave rise to severe changes in weather, with resulting adjustments of life forms. Megafauna, the giant animals that ultimately dominated the landscape, ranged across the prairies. They included the uintatheres - triple-horned giants, the first camels, horses and sheep-sized animals whose herds covered the land. Flannery shares his awe of life's diversity on this continent during the period of recovery after the asteroid's devastation. Flannery depicts a wedge-shaped North America as "a trumpet" with the capacity to amplify weather conditions. When climate conditions changed slightly elsewhere, they were embellished here. The result was seen in both flora and fauna as plants and their herbivore predators adjusted. Conditions finally combined to produce the masses of ice that penetrated deeply south. Flannery tracks the gateways into North America left by the erratic ice [he also concedes that Canada's fossil record was nearly scraped away by the frozen cliffs]. The most significant creature to find a path from elsewhere, of course, proved to be "the hunting ape." The entry of humanity to this nearly unique stage brought truly immense change. Flannery recounts the disappearance of many species of animals, nearly all of them the remnants of the earlier megafauna. No other predator, and not climate, he contends, could have exterminated so many animals so quickly. Only humans, with their organization and weapons could have devastated the megafauna. He shows how the same time frames have parallels in Australia and the Pacific. The bison survived the initial invasion due to their large herd size and mobility. The European wave of human invasion was the most devastating. These new immigrants brought something new in their baggage - technology. New forms of manufacture and transportation overwhelmed the North American scene, transforming drastically. Farming changed from small plots to vast acreages. These installations required mechanical devices for tilling and harvesting. More importantly, they demanded water. In the West, where farming was at best a marginal enterprise, Flannery relates the environmental stress dam building caused. New manufacturing and transportation systems required minerals, which were to be found in the Basin and Range. Mining, damming, ranching intruded on the natural environmental patterns yet became the basis for what is termed "the American System." For Flannery, this frontier economy remains entrenched as the foundation of American thinking. "Globalization" is nothing more than the extension of the "System" expanded to remainder of the world irrespective of its relevance elsewhere. Flannery, however, doesn't view the disruption as irreversible. He urges a full understanding of pre-human invasion conditions as a basis for restorative action. He doesn't believe in setting aside "wilderness areas" as a conservation measure. His prescription is a pro-active approach - the re-introduction of large herbivores to recover lost ecologies. African and Indian elephants introduced to the western prairies, for example, would aid in restoring depleted grasslands. He examines other indicators that suggest North Americans can stop the resource-depleting juggernaut, each of which the reader must consider carefully and with and open mind. There are few flaws in this book. The indexer needs to enter a study program with a good thesaurus, and the money spent on glossy colour photographs might better have gone to more line diagrams. These are petty considerations next to the book's important message. Every student in North America should be given a copy of this book. It is, after all, their future Flannery is addressing.
Rating: 
Summary: A sweeping book, but a tad too sweeping
Review: Mr. Flannery ordered himself up a big plate with this book. If the ecological history of North America can be likened to a buffet line, Mr. Flannery took a helping of every dish. This results in a book that moves, to say the least, quite quickly.
That said, Mr. Flannery has done a very good job. He starts with the asteroid impact off the coast of what is now Central America 65 million years ago and moves on from there. Mr. Flannery describes the extinction of various animal species and goes on to elaborate about the species that replaced them. All of this is done with a very broad brush, but it is done in a way to whet the appetite, not to overwhelm the reader.
The bulk of the book deals with the ecological history of North America from the last ice age onwards. Mr. Flannery is not afraid to tell us his opinion and why he holds it. But, and this says a lot for Mr. Flannery, he never describes opposing theories in disparaging tones. He tells us why he thinks the theory is wrong and goes on from there.
Mr. Flannery puts the blame for the extinction of the ice age megamammals directly on the shoulders of the peoples who migrated to North America circa 13,000 years ago. He claims that within 300 years, all of the large mammals of North America had been driven extinct by relentless hunting. The one question that Mr. Flannery does not address is how rapidly did these peoples populate North America? It does seem to be a bit of a stretch to think that the entire continent was populated in 300 years.
Mr. Flannery also spends a great deal of time on the arrival of the latest wave of peoples to arrive on North America: the Europeans. It is here that Mr. Flannery begins to loose his objectivity. Previously, Mr. Flannery described the mass extinction at the hands of man in objective ecological terms. Now, when Europeans are at fault moral terms are introduced. I am certainly not saying that great evil was not done during the colonization of the continent, but it appears that Mr. Flannery has drunk deep from the well of revisionist history. I think it is telling that this section is the only one where he does not introduce other theories and explanations. Though this is a problem area of the book, the book is certainly worth reading.
The best aspect of this book is the thoughts and vistas that it opens up for the readers. The book opens up the grand landscape of North Amercian ecological history and the reader can find many places to go on diverting journies.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: Much of the first half of the book (after the first chapter) is little more than a listing of various fauna and flora existing at a particular time. The second half shifts to listing all the species rendered extinct by humans. A few quotes from Jared Diamond's much superior "Guns, Germs and Steel" indicate he has read that one but missed a few points.
Rating:
Summary: Thought-provoking and fascinating
Review: Since it covers almost 70 million years of history, this book necessarily avoids a lot of detail in most cases. There's not a lot of explanation of some concepts, or even of some creatures that are referred to. I'd have liked to have seen it as a large-format illustrated book with graphics showing exactly what is referred to, whether it be creatures, or even to illustrate a description of how continents moved over time.
One of the valuable features of the book is that the author is an Australian. He doesn't share the assumptions and prejudices that most North Americans have (I am a citizen of the USA), and doesn't hesitate to kick around ideas such as re-introducing elephants to replace the mammoths and mastodons we have lost. This is particularly evident in his strong criticism of the American tradition of exploiting the land for all it is worth.
He does do a good job of illustrating the dramatic effects that people, even primitive ones, have on an ecosystem. And he pointed out some key recurring things that have repeatedly affected North America over millions of years--Such as how our physical geography affects our weather, and what this means for the plants and animals that live here. Or even the remarkable effect squirrels have had on plants, and on the hunter-gatherer cultures here!
I believe that reading the book is going to actually make a long-term change in how I think about many things. Not a common thing to happen. I highly recommend the book, though I suspect many readers will want to supplement it with more specialized ones on the particular subtopics that interest them.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful information; offers a far-fetched solution
Review: THE ETERNAL FRONTIER is a fantastic book for giving a cursory ecological history of North America, and it presents the information so fluidly that it's easy to retain even for the layman. A year after reading it, I still think of the shallow ocean that once covered the midwest; of the armadillo returning northward from Mexico to reclaim what had once been its territory. Flannery's assertion that North American ecology has been out of balance since the clovis hunters is well supported also. But I found his suggestion for amending this crisis to be genuinely silly, almost to the point that it hurt the overall book. He believes it may be possible to re-introduce large mammals--namely elephants--to North America, thereby re-establishing the balance that existed during the era of the mastadon. This sort of plan exists in such a far-fetched dream world that it undermines the very sober treatise that has led to it. (I just don't see herds of elephants making it across I-80 in their southward migration.) Flannery handles a great deal of information in this book, and his ability to work with the large scale of time is impressive. But the book does overreach in its attempt to solve a thousand year-old problem in North America.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful information; offers a far-fetched solution
Review: THE ETERNAL FRONTIER is a fantastic book for giving a cursory ecological history of North America, and it presents the information so fluidly that it's easy to retain even for the layman. A year after reading it, I still think of the shallow ocean that once covered the midwest; of the armadillo returning northward from Mexico to reclaim what had once been its territory. Flannery's assertion that North American ecology has been out of balance since the clovis hunters is well supported also. But I found his suggestion for amending this crisis to be genuinely silly, almost to the point that it hurt the overall book. He believes it may be possible to re-introduce large mammals--namely elephants--to North America, thereby re-establishing the balance that existed during the era of the mastadon. This sort of plan exists in such a far-fetched dream world that it undermines the very sober treatise that has led to it. (I just don't see herds of elephants making it across I-80 in their southward migration.) Flannery handles a great deal of information in this book, and his ability to work with the large scale of time is impressive. But the book does overreach in its attempt to solve a thousand year-old problem in North America.
Rating:
Summary: Evolution of North America!
Review: The most salient zoogeographic events, starting with the changes in North America's biota caused by the Chicxulub impact, are discussed in this popular work. Little attention is paid to the floral history of the continent, except as it is relevant to the fauna. Nearly half of the discussion is centered on the period after ecologically important human contact--the last 13,200 years. The portion covering the 65 million years before human contact contains mention of such a large number of taxa that they are treated merely in passing. This pattern changes with the discussion of the megafaunal extinctions coinciding with the expansion of the Clovis peoples. Digressions away from a strictly chronological sequence also treat a few recent events and other issues in some detail. The history of American expansion is handled from both the perspective of the effect Euro-Americans have had on the continent's environment and, notably, vice versa. Flannery is director of the South Australian Museum and a professor at the University of Adelaide. He has written many popular natural history books, principally about Australasia. Recommended for public libraries. General readers; lower-division undergraduates.
Rating:
Summary: breathtaking subject matter
Review: The type of knowledge that is in this book is the stuff that makes your head turn. You finish this book and think, that was information I needed to know. You see your own life and current events differently viewed in the context of 65 million years ecological history. Flannery exposes timeless forces and laws of nature operating in their unstoppable way on all life that has graced North America. This book enlightened me on the real America as opposed to what is European or other. Some parts are unbearable, such as the destruction of the bison and passenger pigeon, but even these events can be understood as it has all happened before. Eventually modern Americans will evolve to a sustainable lifestyle. I am visiting the US later this year and my eyes will be much wider open thanks to Flannery. It is a terrific book. If you love knowledge, buy it.
Rating:
Summary: Rediscovery of American roots...
Review: This book is very very insightful. from its beginning point at the asteroid impact that wiped a continent clean and subsequent repopulating waves of vegetative and animal communities, to its discussion of Indigenous human populations/migrations, culminating in the European "re-discoverors'" and the modern conquest replete with considered reference to "guns, germs and steel".... all this is well researched and creative in its most speculative aspects. This is a valuable resource and should provide plenty of opportunity for the learner and educator alike. I particularly appreciate the "deep time" perspective. It resonates with what I believe is a vital component to any truly honest and appropriate assessment of human impacts on landscapes and ecologies. I will use this book in many references for educational projects. This is a great discourse on a most important modern phenomenon: why America and the Americans and their ideasl are so much the envy and goal of all other developing countries.... And yet, Flannery warns (rightly) that the American way is not globally sustainable... Certainly this book will generate much needed discourse.
Rating:
Summary: fascinating read with clear thesis
Review: This is a riveting book that posits a clear interpretation of prehistory and history, and then sets out to prove it. Flannery acknowledges that his thesis is not the only one and that many others disagree with it. I felt as though he at least recognized other theories, even if he didn't give them as much time or space as his own (and why should he?).
If you are interested in the ecological history of this continent, you can't beat this book. It changed the way I think about that history, and certainly did a good job of convincing me that humans played a pivotal role in the megafauna extinction.
I do wish there had been a few more maps and illustrations, particularly of some of the many species Flannery mentions that are now extinct (drawings based on fossils, perhaps?). As a previous reviewer mentioned, a section of the book felt like little more than a listing of extinct species, though the idea of a natural ebb and flow of flora and fauna species across the continent with the changing climate was very effectively communicated.
I'd recommend Diamond's "Guns, Germs & Steel" as a great companion book to this one. I'm just finishing Flannery's "Future Eaters," a similar ecological history of the Australian continient. It's also a great read, but I liked "Eternal Frontier" better.
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