"This is the best book I've read about American bison and their habitat. It is vivid, concise, witty, erudite, first-hand, and up-to-date. Most important, it argues convincingly that the only way to assure survival of bison and their habitat in the wild is to establish a Great Plains National Park at least 5,000 square miles in extent."—David Rains Wallace, author of The Bonehunter's Revenge: Dinosaurs, Greed, and the Great Scientific Feud of the Gilded Age "Dr. Lott's scholarship is strong and thorough. American Bison presents an extensive, state-of-the-art review of key points of American bison that are unaddressed or under-addressed by previous books. Moreover, it does it in a popularized, often narrative form that makes the material comprehensible to the educated lay reader as well as to the bison scholar."—James H. Shaw, Department of Zoology, Oklahoma State University

In a Chicago junk shop three small-time crooks plot to rob a man of his coin collection, the showpiece of which is a valuable "Buffalo nickel". These high-minded grifters fancy themselves businessmen pursuing legitmate free enterprise. But the reality of the three--Donny, the oafish junk shop owner; Bobby, a young junkie Donny has taken under his wing; and "Teach"; a violently paranoid braggart--is that they are merely pawns caught up in their own game of last-chance, dead-end, empty pipe dreams.

On 9 May 2016, the North American bison was federally designated as the first national mammal of the United States. In celebration of this recognition, we are pleased to reissue North American Bison, the most extensive and robust interpretation of the arrival and evolution of bison in North America published during the 20th Century. North American Bison was originally published in 1981. It was based primarily upon information contained in paleontological, zoological, and archaeological collections in some 30 museums and universities in Canada, Mexico, and the United States, all of which was fitted into the best geochro-nology available at the time. The resulting skeletal and chronological patterns were then fitted into the emerging habitat patterns to allow an ecological interpretation of the adaptation of the various species of bison to different environments during their tenure of, probably, over a million years on the North American continent. Four -- or possibly five -- species of bison were recognised as having inhabited the continent at one time or another, including Bison priscus / Bison alaskensis as early forms that originated in Asia and dispersed into North America by way of Beringia; Bison latifrons and Bison antiquus as distinct North American species that probably evolved from an Asian form of bison; and Bison bison which evolved from 10,000 to 5,000 years ago from Bison antiquus. At the time of its release, this book was considered a model by which the evolution of other forms of large mammals of the Quaternary, the most recent Ice Age, could be studied.

American bison used to number in the millions. Large herds roamed the plains of North America. Today, thousands can still be found grazing on protected lands. Find out more about the largest land animals in North America in this informative title for young readers.

American Indian Efforts to restore the Bison.

The near disappearance of the American bison in the nineteenth century is commonly understood to be the result of over-hunting, capitalist greed, and all but genocidal military policy. This interpretation remains seductive because of its simplicity; there are villains and victims in this familiar cautionary tale of the American frontier. But as this volume of groundbreaking scholarship shows, the story of the bison’s demise is actually quite nuanced. Bison and People on the North American Great Plains brings together voices from several disciplines to offer new insights on the relationship between humans and animals that approached extinction. The essays here transcend the border between the United States and Canada to provide a continental context. Contributors include historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, paleontologists, and Native American perspectives. This book explores the deep past and examines the latest knowledge on bison anatomy and physiology, how bison responded to climate change (especially drought), and early bison hunters and pre-contact trade. It also focuses on the era of European contact, in particular the arrival of the horse, and some of the first known instances of over-hunting. By the nineteenth century bison reached a “tipping point” as a result of new tanning practices, an early attempt at protective legislation, and ventures to introducing cattle as a replacement stock. The book concludes with a Lakota perspective featuring new ethnohistorical research. Bison and People on the North American Great Plains is a major contribution to environmental history, western history, and the growing field of transnational history.

Photographs and text trace the cultural and natural history of the North American bison, looking at how the U.S. government practically eliminated the buffalo in the mid-1880s in an attempt to force Native Americans onto reservations, and discussing later conservation efforts.