Above the fruited ‘Plains’

December 20, 2009

Americans may know more about the threats facing the Amazon rainforest than those facing the Great Plains, among the most endangered ecosystems in the world. The vast expanse between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains is a land of bison and bighorn sheep, extinction and environmental degradation. Photographer Michael Forsberg crisscrossed the region gathering evidence to rebut the notion that the center of the United States is a wasteland. He makes his case in “The Great Plains: America’s Lingering Wild’’ (University of Chicago), an oversized work of unconventional beauty.

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SUNDAY BOOK REVIEW

Holiday Travel Books: By JOSHUA HAMMER, Published: December 3, 2009

GREAT PLAINS
America's Lingering Wild
By Michael Forsberg
260 pp. University of Chicago. $45.

Photographs of the endangered ecosystem of the prairies and steppes between the Mississippi River and the Rockies. Above, bison in the snow.

 

Great Plains: America’s Lingering Wild
By Michael Forsberg with Dan O’Brien, David Wishart, and Ted Kooser
University of Chicago Press, 2009; 260 pages, $45.00
Reviewed by Laurence A. Marschall
Review: December 2009 - January 2010

One of Michael Forsberg’s most arresting photographs shows a female bobcat staring at the camera. The felines are relatively common in parts of the Great Plains, we’re told, but being shy of humans and well camouflaged, they’re rarely glimpsed. The bobcat is emblematic of the Great Plains—both are natural treasures that most Americans are barely aware of. We travel over or through the vast swath of Midwestern landscape as fast as we can, missing the beauty of seasonal flowers, secretive wildlife, and prairie wetlands. Thanks to Forsberg and his essayist collaborators, we now may linger and learn. The images range from panoramic cloudscapes over seas of grass to group portraits of bison, bighorn sheep, and sandhill cranes. The book’s subtitle calls the region “America’s Lingering Wild,” but Forsberg sounds a note of caution: “only a fraction of the habitat from a century ago remains.”

 

Top 10 New Radical Gifts

Are you like me -- suddenly realizing that the holidays are only weeks away? And are you totally and completely convinced that you don't want to give the same old, same old this year? Then my favourite New Radical gift ideas might just come in handy. Hopefully you'll find something for the hearts, minds, and souls of the ones you love. (New Radicals are people who are putting the skills they acquired in their careers to work on the world's greatest challenges. For more about the New Radicals, please see archived articles.)

WISDOM
Award-winning photographer Michael Forsberg believes that we can save the Great Plains -- the grasslands that stretch across western North America, second only to the Serengeti in size. His new book, Great Plains - America's Lingering Wild, the most gorgeous coffee table book to come along in years, spells out what's wrong and what we can do. Many of the stories in the book were written by Dan O'Brien, author of a number of books about the region. Dan also raises buffalo in South Dakota, a sustainable (and healthier) alternative to beef, which he sells through his company, Wild Idea Buffalo. You can even order a combo -- buffalo steaks and an autographed copy of the book. A feast for all the senses!

 

Published Tuesday November 15, 2009

Forsberg, Michael with Dan O'Brien & others. Great Plains: America's Lingering Wild. Univ. of Chicago. 2009. 256p. photogs. index. ISBN 978-0-226-25725-9. $45. NAT HIST

Comprising 1,000,000 square miles and stretching 1800 miles from southern Canada to northern Mexico, the American Great Plains is one of the world's largest grassland ecosystems. Increasingly, the biodiversity of this historically resilient region is threatened by human population growth, agriculture, and climate change. In an effort to address the environmental plight of his native region, Nebraska-based photographer Forsberg has created an exquisite, bittersweet love song to the Great Plains. This magnificent pictorial collection represents three years of field work, and every image is worth lingering over. Readers unfamiliar with the Great Plains will appreciate historical geographer David Wishart's extensive introduction, which illuminates the region's often overlooked significance in American history. Award-winning novelist O'Brien (The Contract Surgeon) contributes a series of short essays reflecting his trademark mix of sentiment and cynicism, and the lyrical foreword by American poet laureate Ted Kooser is not to be missed. VERDICT Essential for readers interested in Midwestern history, ecology, and wildlife; fans of Midwestern literature will also enjoy.—Kelsy Peterson, Prairie Village, KS

STARRED REVIEW.
Great Plains: America’s Lingering Wild
Michael Forsberg with Dan O’Brien, David Wishart, and Ted Kooser.
Univ. of Chicago, $45 (260p) ISBN 9780226257259

The increasingly bi-coastal citizenry of the U.S. and Canada know less and less of the great central plains of the North American steppe, but this engrossing book from photographer and naturalist Forsberg, with ecological and geographical essays by O’Brien and Wishart, fills that need in overflowing excess. Forsberg’s photography is spectacular, capturing the wide-open spaces of locales like the South Dakota Badlands and the fluid movement of its wildlife. As Wishart points out, the Great Plains are far from flat, comprised of rugged river valleys, outcrops of old volcanoes, glacial potholes and buffalo wallows, and formerly-vast marshlands. Univ. of Nebraska geography professor Wishart contributes historical and geographic overviews of three major ecological regions: the Tallgrass Prairie, the Northern Plains and the Southern Plains. The authors also look at the history of cross-continent exploration by the Spanish and the French, as well as 18th century fur traders who traversed the Rockies decades before Lewis and Clark. Author O’Brien (Buffalo for the Broken Heart) provides vivid, precise, and emotional essays that describe the ecological present and the hope for future developments in grasslands restoration. Wonderful maps of the entire Great Plains and individual regions add a great deal to this informative overview, making it a coffee table book worth studying. (Oct.)

 

Great Plains: America's Lingering Wild

Forsberg, Michael with Dan O'Brien & others.. Univ. of Chicago. 2009. 256p. photogs. index. ISBN 978-0-226-25725-9. $45. NAT HIST

“The Great Plains, flowing from Canada to Mexico and embracing a dozen American states, is a ‘complicated and critical mesh of ecosystems,’ a vast region containing tall prairies, steppes, wetlands, badlands, tablelands, mountains, and canyons. The plains’ beauty is by turns dramatic and subtle, its environmental damage severe. It takes a big book to portray such an immense, complex place, and this spacious volume, vividly introduced by poet Ted Kooser, fits the bill. Intrepid photographer Michael Forsberg presents breathtaking images of wide-open spaces and portraits of wildlife from bison to butterflies, bobcats to frogs. Historical geographer David Wishart contrasts the lives of the region’s Native peoples with the deleterious impact of settlers, who plowed up the grasslands, sending countless species into decline and losing precious topsoil to wind erosion. Wildlife biologist, rancher, and writer Dan O’Brien—flinty, funny, and skeptical—dissects the mythology of the Great Plains, the ‘monumental hubris, greed, and lack of common sense’ that led to its near destruction, and, on the upswing, today’s bold restoration efforts. In all, a quintessential and crucial American story, powerfully told.” (October 2009)