Ancestor Approved & Sisters of the Neversea
Wild Girls: How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged A Nation

Blood Memory: The Tragic Decline and Improbable Resurrection of the American Buffalo

The American buffalo—our nation’s official mammal—is an improbable, shaggy beast that has found itself at the center of many of our most mythic and sometimes heartbreaking tales. The largest land animals in the Western Hemisphere, they are survivors of a mass extinction that erased ancient species that were even larger. For nearly 10,000 years, they evolved alongside Native people who weaved them into every aspect of daily life; relied on them for food, clothing, and shelter; and revered them as equals.

Newcomers to the continent found the buffalo fascinating at first, but in time they came to consider them a hindrance to a young nation’s expansion. And in the space of only a decade, they were slaughtered by the millions for their hides, with their carcasses left to rot on the prairies. Then, teetering on the brink of disappearing from the face of the earth, they would be rescued by a motley collection of Americans, each of them driven by different—and sometimes competing—impulses. This is the rich and complicated story of a young republic’s heedless rush to conquer a continent, but also of the dawn of the conservation era—a story of America at its very best and worst.

More Adult, Non-Juvenile Books

  • Based upon painstaking research, We Hereby Refuse presents an original vision of America's past with disturbing links to the American present.

  • Punctuated by historical images and told through multiple voices, languages, literary forms and documents, West: A Translation explores what unites and divides America, drawing a powerful, necessary connection between the completion of the transcontinental railroad and the Chinese Exclusion Act.

  • One of the most distinctive and prolific writers of the Harlem Renaissance, Anita Scott Coleman (1890-1960) found popular and critical success in the flourishing African American press of the early twentieth century. Yet unlike many of her New York-based contemporaries, Coleman lived her life in the American West, first in New Mexico and later in California. Her work thus offers a rare view of African American life in that region. Broader in scope than any previous anthology of Coleman’s writings, this volume collects the author’s finest stories, essays, and poems, including many not published since they first appeared in African American [...]

  • In Whalesong: The True Story of the Musician Who Talked to Orcas, readers will be enchanted by the tale of Paul Horn, a professional musician who, alongside scientist Dr. Paul Spong, discovers the ability to communicate with captive orcas through music. This captivating story not only highlights the bond between humans and these majestic creatures but also ignites an entire anti-captivity movement dedicated to their protection.

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