Wild New World: The Epic Story of Animals and People in America

Flores (emeritus, Western history, Univ. of Montana; Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History) draws on many scientific and social disciplines to paint a devastating portrait of humans as precipitating agents of the current “sixth extinction.” Flores’s exploration ranges from when humans initially migrated into North America to the depressingly familiar materialism and human exceptionalism that has shaped, if not driven, most U.S. approaches to the natural world from the 1700s to today. The extraordinary success of humans as animals—classic bipedal carnivorous hunters—sets the stage for this ambitious exploration of the eons-long relationship between people and American wildlife. The result is a fascinating, if occasionally overly dense, narrative that drives home the perilous cost of erasing humankind’s animal identity or ignoring the complexity that is animal existence. Listeners are neither hampered nor aided by Clark Cornell’s narration, which is consistently serviceable but never compelling, a fact that leaves the content to do most of the convincing alone.