The Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History of North America and Its Peoples [Hardcover]

Tim Flannery (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 10, 2001 | ISBN-10: 0871137895 | ISBN-13: 978-0871137890 | Edition: 1

In the tradition of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, The Eternal Frontier is ecological history on a monumental scale. One of the world's foremost paleontologists, Tim Flannery has undertaken a task of enormous ambition and accomplished something never before attempted: a history of the formation of North America as we know it today. Starting with an asteroid strike 65 million years ago, Flannery shows how the continent came into being and was then transformed into our modern landscape. He describes the development of North America's deciduous forests and other flora and tracks the immigration and emigration of various animals to and from Europe, Asia, and South America, showing how plant and animal species have either adapted or become extinct. The story takes in the massive changes wrought by the ice ages and the coming of humans, and continues right up to the present, covering the deforestation of the Northeast, the decimation of the buffalo, and other facets of the enormous impact of frontier settlement and the development of the industrial might of the United States. The Eternal Frontier contains an enormous wealth of fascinating scientific details, and Flannery's accessible and dynamic writing makes the book a delight to read. It is a heady, almost vertiginous feeling to ponder the enormous span of time that the book covers and to assimilate the radical changes that have occurred over the years. This is science writing at its very best: a page-turner that is simultaneously an accessible but scholarly trove of incredible information. Destined to be a classic, The Eternal Frontier is a truly astonishing accomplishment.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Reading The Eternal Frontier might be the closest you'll get to taking a class from Tim Flannery--and that alone makes it an opportunity just too good to pass up. This ambitious retelling of North America's dramatic ecological history grew out of a course that Flannery taught at Harvard surveying the continent's ancient past up to its tumultuous near-present: from the extraterrestrial "death-dealing visitor" that struck 65 million years ago all the way through to the tidal invasions, adaptations, and extinctions that have washed over North America since, each idiosyncratically influenced by an ever-changing geology, geography, and climate.

Flannery admirably balances his twin roles as scientist and storyteller. As a thoughtful teacher, he employs memorable and effective examples to illustrate broader topics, but he's also willing to commit to theoretical explanations (with fair warning) when necessary to thread together the narrative. But Flannery's greatest strength might simply be the empathy he inspires as a fellow human being trying to sort out an intricate, often richly beautiful puzzle. It's hard not to identify with his curiosity and enthusiasm, whether he's recalling memories of late nights spent as a child reading the How and Why Book of Prehistoric Mammals (and the uintathere nightmares that followed) or just marveling over the vast American West from his window seat on a plane.

The Eternal Frontier certainly leaves you with a solid outline of the how, why, and when of North America's enigmatic ecology, and what the implications of a dwindling frontier have for our future. But don't be surprised when what you remember best are Flannery's countless details--worthy of repeating at any self-respecting pub--from marsupial sperm that swim in pairs to the reason that Native American cultures might owe their very existence to squirrels' taste in nuts. --Paul Hughes

From Publishers Weekly

If Nature itself has a nature, it's the desire for balance. In a fascinating chronicle of our continent's evolution, Flannery shows, however, that this desire must forever be frustrated. Flannery starts his tale with the asteroid collision that destroyed the dinosaurs, ends with the almost equally cataclysmic arrival of humankind and fills the middle with an engaging survey of invaders from other lands, wild speciation and an ever-changing climate, all of which have kept the ecology of North America in a constant state of flux. We see the rise of horses, camels and dogs (cats are Eurasian), the rapid extinction of mammoths, mastodons and other megafauna at the hands of prehistoric man, and the even quicker extinction of the passenger pigeon and other creatures more recently. Flannery also spotlights plenty of scientists at work, most notably one who tries to butcher an elephant as a prehistoric man would have butchered a mastodon, and another who had the intestinal fortitude to check whether meat would keep if a carcass were stored at the bottom of a frigid pond, the earliest of refrigerators. This material might be dense and academic in another's hands, but Flannery displays a light touch, a keen understanding of what will interest general readers and a good sense of structure, which keeps the book moving, manageable and memorable. (May)Forecast: Atlantic Monthly clearly intends to build on the reputation Flannery attained with his previous, highly acclaimed book, Throwim Way Leg and they may have a winner here. The first printing will be 60,000 copies, with a $100,000 promotional budget and a 21-city author tour.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press; 1 edition (May 10, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0871137895
• ISBN-13: 978-0871137890
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #697,178 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Evolution of North America, July 4, 2001

By 

Retired "dmk42" (Huntsville, Alabama, USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History of North America and Its Peoples (Hardcover)

This is an outstanding book. Without doubt it is the best I have ever read on plant, animal, & landform evolution during the Cenozoic Era in general, & North America in particular. However, the only reason I don't rate this book at 5 stars is that it desperately needs illustrations. Tim Flannery, if you read this review, please put out a second edition of this book ASAP, but containing some 50-100 new pages of drawings & color images of all the major plants & animals described, along with maps showing changes to the North American land mass - its immigration routes from Europe, Asia, & South America, glacier advances, etc - for each Epoch of the Tertiary & Quaternary Periods. I also recommend that a geologic time-chart be shown at the beginning of each chapter, highlighting the time period being discussed, since I expect the general reader could not differentiate the Paleocene from the Pleistocene by name alone. Even without these illustrations, this is still a great read, but it would have been a lot more fun without having to keep a dozen other books nearby to look up pictures of each plant, animal, or landform change being discussed.

57 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Crocodile Dundee Does America, April 25, 2001

By 

Diana Muir "Diana Muir" (Newton, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History of North America and Its Peoples (Hardcover)

Eternal Frontier is a marvelous read, lively, insightful, fast - well, you have to go fast to cover 65 million years in 357 pages. And, boy, does Flannery cover the territory. A student of the animal kingdon, he has covered a lot of physical territory in his career, studying the remains of extinct species and searching for undescribed living ones in the forests of New Guinea. Small wonder, then, that Flannery is at his best when contemplating the forces that led to the evolution or extinction of species, or of entire classes of species. In the pages of Eternal Frontier ancient periods of warm climate conjure tropical forests in the Dakotas and create strange herbivorous beasts who munch their way across the landscape, only to be swept away by the onset of an ice age. The pleasure for readers is that Flannery doesn't just describe what took place, he leads us into an understanding of the process whereby creatures evolve to fill vacant niches in an evolving ecosystem. It is wonderful stuff.

The closer we come to the present day, however, the further Flannery moves from material he knows really well. Readers spoiled by such masterful works of ecological history as William Cronon's Changes in the Land and Donald Worster's Rivers of Empire will find Flannery shallow indeed.

In truth, this entire, wonderful book will not bring much pleasure to readers who are familiar with the subjects covered. When confronted with confusing evidence that might support one of several plausible historical scenarios, Flannery picks the one he finds most compelling and dismisses the others. Extinction of the paleolithic megafauna, for example, was here caused by overhunting by spear-carrying paleo-Indians, the first humans to enter the western hemisphere, who arrived about 13,000 years ago. This dismisses some major areas of evidence to the contrary. Flannery is, of course, familiar with this evidence. Readers will not discover how compelling some of it is. When the story reaches European settlement, it becomes clear that Flannery has only a cursory familiarity with the literature. The irony is that both when dealing with the pre-history he knows so well and with the historical period with which he is less familiar, Flannery has a sure instinct for apparant truth. Most of the hypothesis that he ignores or dismisses are, indeed, less well-supported than the story he tells. And even when in discussing the historical period he gets lots of the details wrong, he has the grand outline right. A reader of Eternal Frontier will have a very good grasp of how nature continues to shape America.

The advantage of Flannery's approach is that he tells a ripping good story. It moves quickly, it is fun to read, it is thought-provoking, and it is even true.

29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A classic for our times!, April 19, 2001

By 

Keith Thomas (Canberra, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History of North America and Its Peoples (Hardcover)

Flannery begins his ecological history of North America 65m years ago with the Chicxulub asteroid impact spraying molten rock far into the present Canada and creating a shockwave that flattened trees across the continent. North America lost 80% of its flowering plant species and the dust polluted the atmosphere so most photosynthesis stopped as the planet entered a decade of freezing temperatures.

From here the book describes the major ecological developments through to the present, starting with how the continental drift of Australia from Antarctica and the rise of the Panamanian isthmus impacted on North America's climate. Even when writing of continental drift, Flannery's account is fast-paced. Some will deplore Flannery's speculations, but I found them intensely stimulating. One speculation is not necessarily like another: a well-informed speculation can help to eliminate more far-fetched speculations.

This quote exemplifies his well-informed speculation:

"The lifestyles of the oreodonts have been a mystery for some time. Some possessed eyes on the top of their heads like hippos, which certain researchers have taken to indicate an aquatic life. Oreodont remains, though, are most common in windblown sediments, indicating dry conditions. New and still contentious studies focusing on well-preserved remains of animals that were presumably buried where they lived suggest that some oreodonts may have been burrowers. Some skeletons even have the remains of foetuses, usually, two, three or four, preserved in their mother's belly. Such large animals tend to have so many young only if they live a precarious life, prompting one researcher to suggest that oreodonts used those eyes atop their heads to peek over the rims of their burrows before emerging. But what kind of danger were they keeping an eye out for? The caution of the oreodonts may have been prompted by the pig-like entelodonts...."

Throughout the book Flannery lifts the lid on some of the liveliest scientific controversies. Thus he begins the second half of the book with a clear account of carbon-14 dating and the debate about whether the extinction of most American megafauna was caused by climate change or the arrival of the American Indians. Both debates have political implications for present social policy and Flannery does not, thankfully, smother his account with politically-correct obfuscation.

Chapter 23 describes the destruction of the American Indians - an eye-opener for someone like me who, as a child, played "cowboys and Indians" on the premise that the two sides were evenly matched.

Flannery is fascinated with the notion of "frontier" as was Frederick Jackson Turner who documented the closure of North America's physical frontier; but for Flannery the frontier lives on in US popular culture.

Flannery describes how the myth of the eternally bountiful frontier has fostered a cavalier disregard for environmental laws and other attempts to constrain profligate behaviour. A nation "conceived in liberty" actually had its cultural and political freedom underwritten by rich glacial soils, abundant water and ecological diversity. When these frontier underpinnings no longer apply, US culture will have to adapt to survive.

Flannery leads the reader to ask if the spread of American frontier culture to nations without the bounty of North America has been at huge cost to their environment. Flannery's second theme is his three-phase model of "founder effect", "release" and "adaptation". The founders find an ecological niche and exploit it and in the absence of competition almost all variants make a living of some sort. "Release" occurs when a species is newly arrived in its environment with few competitors and abundant resources; they diversify and flourish in their new conditions. In Flannery's book, the same applies to grizzly bears as to humans on the "eternal frontier"; however, release and adaptation is faster with humans as culture can change more rapidly than biology. When abundance diminishes, species have to adapt to their environment. Because North America is such a rich continent, Europeans have as yet adapted very little - a phase they must enter to produce a diverse and truly North American society. He observes that North Americans still seek frontiers to exploit (irrigating the deserts, even exploiting space - their last frontier) rather than adapting.

This review cannot hope to bring out the richness of Flannery's book. It flows so effortlessly that the reader barely notices the superscript references that follow many paragraphs which show that he has woven together his 365 sources into a seamless tale.

Flannery takes Aldo Leopold's dictum about restoring the environment and shows that there was no complete ecological balance in pre-European or pre-Indian times.

This introduces the question of how the wilderness areas should be managed for the future. Flannery seeks to "revolutionize our rangelands management" by proposing a megafauna to recreate the more balanced ecology of 13,000 years ago: elephant (to replace the mammoth and mastodon), bison, llama, tapir, jaguar, camel and Chacoan peccary - all of which could be harvested for mutual human/megafauna/ecology benefit.

My criticisms of the book are minor and I would not like them to be taken as detracting from this otherwise positive review. The seven-page index is adequate but has not been compiled by someone who understood Flannery's theoretical models. It would have been more helpful, too, if all the animal and plant species mentioned in the text were included in the index. The maps are inadequate: they do not show the majority of the sites mentioned, nor the locations of the Indian tribes referred to. The addition of timelines and illustrations (even silhouettes) of all the animals covered would enrich the book.

Flannery's book has come at an opportune time. Most topically, when the US is considering the implications of the most recent census, when the Bush administration is finding its feet in terms of environmental policy and when creationist escapism is threatening scientific education. More significantly, because the physical and biological frontier, eternal for millions of years, has been closed for all time by the latest mass immigrant and mass exploiter: homo sapiens.