The Destruction of the Bison

An Environmental History, 1750–1920

Andrew C. Isenberg

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781108816724
• eBook ISBN: 9781108849678
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

For the last twenty years, The Destruction of the Bison has been an essential work in environmental history. Andrew C. Isenberg offers a concise analysis of the near-extinction of the North American bison population from an estimated 30 million in 1800 to fewer than 1000 a century later. His wide-ranging, interdisciplinary study carefully considers the multiple causes, cultural and ecological, of the destruction of the species. The twentieth-anniversary edition includes a new foreword connecting this seminal work to developments in the field – notably new perspectives in Native American history and the rise of transnational history – and placing the story of the bison in global context. A new afterword extends the study to the twenty-first century, underlining the continued importance of this ground-breaking text for current, and future, students and scholars.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Series page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 The Grassland Environment
• 2 The Genesis of the Nomads
• 3 The Nomadic Experiment
• 4 The Ascendancy of the Market
• 5 The Wild and the Tamed
• 6 The Returns of the Bison
• Conclusion
• Afterword
• Index