August Book of the Month
Theodore Roosevelt & Bison Restoration on the Great Plains
By Keith Aune and Glenn Plumb
Details: Natural History, U.S. history, Plains Indians
Publisher: The History Press (a division of Arcadia Publishing SC), 2019
In 1858, bison on the Great Plains were about 20 per square mile. By 1900, bison were on the brink of extinction. Honorary president of the American Bison Society, Theodore Roosevelt was outraged at the unrestrained exploitation of bison for commercial purposes, much of that related to unjustified actions toward American Indians. Roosevelt started a restoration plan that was unlike any during this period. Theodore Roosevelt & Bison Restoration on the Great Plains details Roosevelt's conservation legacy and the work of many others. Roosevelt used his authority to protect wildlife and public lands by creating the United States Forest Service, establishing 150 national forests, 51 federal bird reserves, 4 national game preserves, 5 national parks, and 18 national monuments. He was responsible shipping bison out west in an effort to repopulate the Great Plains from which the bison had been decimated, sending Bison to Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Montana. Aune & Plumb describe how the Bison survived through the partnership of federal, state, and local governments, along with the Blackfeet Nation, the Lakota Nation, and others who wanted to save this iconic animal of the Plains.
“Aune and Plumb provide a concise yet descriptive history of the American bison and the dedicated conservationists, with President Theodore Roosevelt as the central figure, determined to save it from extinction…To give readers a sense of the enormity of this loss, the authors note that during the height of the bison slaughter, the equivalent of two animals were killed every minute of every day for 40 years.”
—Pat Thomas, Wildlife Conservation Society, Bronx Zoo
Past Great Plains Books of the Month:
American Serengeti: The Last Big Animals of the Great Plains, Dan Flores
A Chorus of Cranes: The Cranes of North America and the World, Paul Johnsgard
Encounter on the Great Plains: Scandinavian Settlers and the Dispossession of Dakota Indians, 1890-1930, Karen Hansen
Wild Again: The Struggle to Save the Black-Footed Ferret, David Jachowski
A Warrior of the People: How Susan La Flesche Overcame Racial and Gender Inequality to Become America's First Indian Doctor, Joe Starita
Natives of a Dry Place: Stories of Dakota Before the Oil Boom, Richard Edwards
Towards a Prairie Atonement, Trevor Herriot
Walking the Llano, Shelley Armitage
Barnstorming the Prairie, Jason Weems
Homesteading the Plains, Richard Edwards, Rebecca Wingo, Jacob Friefeld
Nebraska Poetry: A Sesquicentennial Anthology 1867-2017, Edited by Daniel Simon
This Blessed Earth: A Year in the Life of an American Family Farm, Ted Genoways
Grasses of the Great Plains, By James Stubbendieck, Stephan L. Hatch, Cheryl D. Dunn
The Personal History of Rachel DuPree, Ann Weisgarber
The Trans-Mississippi and International Expositions of 1898–1899: Art, Anthropology, and Popular Culture at the Fin de Siècle by Wendy Katz
Jewels of the Plains: Wildflowers of the Great Plains Grasslands and Hills by Claude Barr and James Locklear
Chemical Lands: Pesticides, Aerial Spraying, and Health in North America's Grasslands Since 1945 by David Vail
Converting the Rosebud: Catholic Mission and the Lakota, 1886-1916 by Harvey Markowitz
The Sea of Grass: A Family Tale from the American Heartland by Walter Echo-Hawk
Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser.
Great Plains Literature by Linda Ray Pratt
Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth by Sarah Smarsh
American Trinity: Jefferson, Custer, and the Spirit of the West by Larry Len Peterson
Native but Foreign: Indigenous Immigrants and Refugees in the North American Borderlands by Brenden Rensink
Slavery on the Periphery: The Kansas-Missouri Border in the Antebellum and Civil War Eras by Kristen Epps
Visions of the Tallgrass: Prairie Photographs by Harvey Payne
Flood on the Tracks: Living, Dying, and the Nature of Disaster in the Elkhorn River Basin by Todd Kerstetter
Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
kisiskâciwan: Indigenous Voices from Where the River Flows Swiftly by Jesse Rae Archibald-Barber
Pacing Dakota by Thomas Dean Isern