Customer Reviews

Nature's Ghosts: Confronting Extinction from the Age of Jefferson to the Age of Ecology

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Nature's Ghosts is destined to be a classic in the history of American conservation. It fills in lacunae in existing conservation histories by (1) documenting how scientific understandings of species extinctions unfolded from the mid 18th, century onward, (2) explaining in more detail than any other work the critical role that American scientific naturalists played, from the late 19th century, in fostering understanding, concern, and political action in response to anthropogenic species extinctions, both in America and internationally, and (3) demonstrating the profound changes in perceptions and values that have accompanied increasing concern about species extinctions in America and abroad. Highly recommended for anyone seeking to understand the entire range of contributions to conservation history, but it should be read along with several other essential studies which complement it in their own ways, including Nature's Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas (Studies in Environment and History), Wilderness and the American Mind, Fourth Edition, American Conservation Movement: John Muir And His Legacy, and Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future.

Early Europeans viewed North America as a place of incredibly diverse and seemingly inexhaustible natural riches. Settlers couldn't believe the abundance of birds and fish and useful furry animals. How that view slowly - very slowly, in fits and starts and with many advances and retreats - changed to a modern view of conservation, losing many key species along with way, is the subject of Barrows' well-written and thorough treatment. I've not come across a book like this, which introduces people both famous and forgotten, organizations that evolved into modern conservation forces, and the contradictions of naturalists who worried about extinction even as they shot and collected every specimen in sight. You know of the work of John James Audubon and Aldo Leopold, but Victor Shelford? John C. Phillips? The American Committee for International Wildlife Protection? With other people, like Archie Carr, I knew of them but hadn't realized just how influential they were. I thought I was fairly well read on this topic, but I found surprises on every page, and there are 82 pages of endnotes to reinforce the 360-page main story. This truly is is a landmark work.

Matt Bille, author, Shadows of Existence: Discoveries and Speculations in Zoology (Hancock, 2006)