Synopsis
History and prehistory come alive in this extraordinary account of America as it was before it got its name. William H. MacLeish paints a heart-rending portrait of the lush, miraculous New World on the eve of the Encounter - the arrival of the first Europeans, after which nothing would be the same. Drawing on the work of anthropologists, geologists, and other academic experts, MacLeish roams over 18,000 years of the continent's history, exploring the role of climate and human activity in preparing the world that we have inherited. The Day Before America is studded with fascinating information on the awesome changes wrought by the ice age (and the inevitability of its return), the ecological effects of hunting and early agriculture, the astonishing variety of Indian civilizations, and the transformations in the continent's nature over the past five hundred years. It is a book informed by a deep commitment to the wonder and sacredness of the natural world. At bottom, it is a statement of belief in an unsentimental environmentalism - an effort to see our world in the longest view, and to value it all the more for that.
Reviews
In a beautifully written meditation, Eco contributing editor MacLeish charts the ecological devastation and societal upheaval wrought by Spanish, French, English and Dutch colonizers of the New World. Drawing on interviews with ecologists, archeologists, prehistorians and anthropologists, as well as his own travels, he lyrically evokes the lush pre-Columbian Americas, where herds of caribou, mammoths and camels roamed in the late Pleistocene as glaciers melted. He also delineates a wide diversity of native cultures, such as the Calusa whale-hunters of the Pacific Northwest, the peoples who built huge burial mounds from Alabama to Ohio arund A.D. 1000, and the Chaco Canyon, N.M. housing-complex dwellers circa A.D. 500. MacLeish closes his highly personal essay with reflections on the destructive impact of contemporary Americans' high-consumption lifestyle. Illustrations.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Blending paleontology and environmentalism, MacLeish (The Gulf Stream, 1988) explores the nature of America as it was before Europeans arrived. After briefly sketching the variety and complexity of the indigenous human societies (whalers in the Pacific Northwest and mound builders in Ohio, as well as the more familiar denizens of plains and forest), the author jumps backward in time to an ice- covered continent on which no human had ever set foot. South of the glaciers lived an astonishing variety of now-vanished creatures: mammoths, saber-toothed cats, camels, giant beavers, ground sloths, and predatory flightless birds. At some point--at least 15,000 years ago, possibly 50,000 or more--human beings arrived, and the continent began to change. How much of the loss of Pleistocene fauna was caused by hunting is a matter of debate, but MacLeish's point is clear: Human beings have always had an impact on their world. Plant life also changed, most obviously in the domestication of such crops as corn, squash, beans, and other staples of Indian agriculture. After a simplistic look at Europe on the eve of the discovery of America, the author traces the impact of colonization not only on the native population (hit hardest by diseases to which it had no resistance), but on an ecology that seemed at first to offer boundless riches. He traces the rise of the lumber industry, the conversion of the prairies into farmland, the arrival of a voracious consumer society. Finally, he tries to see what the future may offer, finding no easy solutions for the unsettling possibilities posed by population growth and environmental degradation. MacLeish occasionally descends to facile Europe- bashing, but he has a noteworthy ability to place modern issues in the broad context of geological time. Unusually rewarding for readers who want to see beyond the familiar and the comfortable. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
A storyteller with a penchant for history, MacLeish weaves a spellbinding tale about human life and environmental change in North America north of Mexico after about 15,000 B.C. Drawing on the work of archaeologists, paleobiologists, and the comments of Native Americans, he synthesizes what is known about the first Americans and their cultural evolution. In this personal odyssey, MacLeish addresses questions of human ecology, population growth, climate change, warfare, cultural morality, domestication origins, and a host of other issues of contemporary social and public policy. This unique and engaging essay will be of interest to the general reader.
William S. Dancey, Ohio State Univ., Columbus
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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