by Tim Flannery
Pretty darn sweeping account of North America--and a little of South America--from before birth to today with a bit of speculation about tomorrow. Cool stuff awaits.
He goes into so much detail about so many things that I felt lost at times, and in some chapters he jumped from species to species so rapidly I felt really lost. Not that I expected this from him, but iti would be really interesting to read a book that went into great depth about all that is known of some of the prehistoric mammals--the horses, the sabre-toothed cat, the wooly mammoth, the short-faced bear....
Also in his discussion of plants was just a jumping off place for a hundred explorations of individual plants and whole ecosystems. In fact, that may be what was lacking to make the story complete. To describe an ecosystem in a way you know it and feel it...wow. That would have made this an awfully big book and I would never have tried to read it. So never mind.
It's best as it is. Sweeping, grand, and marvelous. It's a cool place we live in. Hope we can go on living here.
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