Eric W. Sanderson and Markley Boywer's Mannahatta

You don't have to be a New Yorker to be enthralled by this book.

-- Library Journal, 05/11/2009

.Sanderson, Eric W. (text) & Markley Boyer (illus). Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City. Abrams. May 2009. 352p. illus. maps. bibliog. index. ISBN 978-0-8109-9633-5. $40. SCI

The pristine island of Mannahatta that Henry Hudson set foot upon in 1609 was known in the native Lenape language as "the island of many hills," where wolves and black bears roamed forests and meadows. Exactly 400 years later, the human footprint of the island has all but erased the erstwhile natural splendor, but, thanks to this book's striking images, we can at least glimpse what it was like. Sanderson, a landscape ecologist and New Yorker, spearheaded the Mannahatta Project to reconstruct Manhattan's ecological history. Using period maps, descriptions, archaeological findings, and a variety of other primary sources combined with some cutting-edge technologies for computational geography, Sanderson and illustrator Boyer produced vivid pictures of the forests, ponds, hills, wetlands, and other distinctive ecosystems that covered what was to become the concrete metropolis. Especially striking are split images that juxtapose today's urban patchwork with the same landscape, in its primeval splendor. The text describes the project itself, the lives of the indigenous peoples, the varied ecological neighborhoods, and a future peek at what New York City might look like in another 400 years. You don't have to be a New Yorker to be enthralled by this book. Highly recommended. [The Mannahatta/Manhattan exhibition will be on display at the Museum of the City of New York, May 20–Oct. 13.]—Gregg Sapp, Evergreen State Coll., Olympia,

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