A concise environmental history of the near-extinction of the bison from the mid-eighteenth century to the present.

Andrew C. Isenberg is the Hall Distinguished Professor of American History at the University of Kansas. An environmental historian specializing in the North American West, he is the co-author of The Republican Reversal: Conservatives and the Environment from Nixon to Trump (2018) and the author of Wyatt Earp: A Vigilante Life (2013) and Mining California: An Ecological History (2005).

Foreword; Acknowledgments; Introduction; 1. The grassland environment; 2. The genesis of the nomads; 3. The nomadic experiment; 4. The ascendancy of the market; 5. The wild and the tamed; 6. The returns of the bison; Conclusion; Afterword; Index.