Customer Reviews

The Last Giant of Beringia: The Mystery of the Bering Land Bridge

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This book is a "must read". While the existence of a prehistoric land bridge connecting Alaska and Asia has been surmised for hundreds of years, it was David Hopkins with his multi-discipline approach who pulled the evidence all together. The book, while giving a detailed yet easy to understand explanation of the reasoning involved, pays tribute to a tremendous individual and his work.

While many branches of science are discussed, the writing is concise, easy to understand and never gets bogged down with scientific jargon. O'Neill has a firm handle on the English language, and presents a very readable work.

Whether you are researching or reading for pleasure, this book is a very worthwhile endeavor. Don't miss it.

This book is about the scientists who have studied Beringia and how they have put together the pieces of the puzzle to develop our current knowledge of this very interesting part of the earth. Actually, the title refers to one particular person, the geologist Dave Hopkins (1921-2001), who devoted his life to the study of the Holocene geology of Alaska. There are also almost entire chapters about others, including the Swedish botanist Eric Hultén and the American archeologist Louis Giddings. The accounts of their field trips are all fascinating, but I wish the overall story was presented more coherently. Many others entered and left the story, often making me forget about Hopkins. The couple of chapters on Native Americans at the end could also have been left out. The origins of Native Americans, a fascinating subject on its own, and although closely tied in with Beringia, doesn't quite fit into this book.

Nevertheless, I did learn quite a bit from this book. And although it is for the general readers, the book ends with a long list of references to the scientific literature that would be very helpful for those interested in learning more.

This book has a good style, topic, and size. I am not an earth science person but still understood most of this book and enjoyed reading this book. The information was concise without being too dense to understand. It also helped me understand something I remember hearing about in grade school but never thought deeply about. I highly reccomend this book as a science narrative!

A good read for someone who is a beginner or just beginning to be interest in Beringia.

I was disappointed that it did not contain data from the explosion of research that has occurred in the last 10 - 15 years in Beringia, from sea bed core drillings to off-shore cave exploration. Along with a multitude of core drilling from glaciers that can now more accurately be analyzed. I had hoped for more scientific date especially since there has been so much work done up there recently.

The biography of the major pioneer in the field was interesting as a passing by-line to the overall picture.

The book was well written, interesting, held my attention, not too long and generally a good read - just light on the science.

Overall a book for beginners.