Based on the cover, I had hoped this would be more about Ice Age America and the coming of the first humans. There was a good bit of that, but soon goes into the colonial story. Which is fine; it’s just kind of a lot of rehashed material as far as I’m concerned. I was just hoping more of the REALLY old stuff; which to be fair probably doesn’t exist since we just don’t know a lot of details about how those early people lived.

A point I remember from reading 1491 is how the sorry “savage” state of American Indians that the first chroniclers described was tremendously influenced by the devastating plagues that European contact was wreaking on the Americas at the time. A corollary to that is pointed out here: the human depopulation for a century led to a resurgence in animal life, which is what the first colonists encountered and thus colored their impressions of a virgin, untamed wilderness. Then they went on an unrestrained “market hunting” spree for 300 years, wiping out bison and passenger pigeons, then turned to poisoning wolves to make ranges safe for cattle. All of which we know is Very Bad now and Wish We Had Not Done. (Ok that’s a little unfair; I really do like nature and think exterminating species is immoral … but at the same time, some of the sentiments in this book judge the past through today’s lens a little too much.)

One of my thoughts while listening to this: every species would strip nature for its own benefit if it could, just like humans did/do.  It’s only a problem when the species are too smart.  Hopefully, we are at an inflection point where we are collectively getting smart enough to voluntarily control our consumption (which includes a right-fit population size). On the other hand, nature is good at stemming population explosions … unfortunately with famine and mass death though. Predators are good for keeping down prey numbers :: war/famine/shortages are good for keeping down human numbers??

And another thought: reintroducing wolves and mourning lost species is fine but … maybe we let the past be past and focus on the future? There’s a lot of time spent on wolves in the book, and just a throwaway bit on feral wild hogs thriving in today’s America. Why are wolves good, hogs bad? Aren’t “invasive” species just a sign of changing times? (and they have always been changing)

Final note on this audiobook … the narrator has super weird pronunciation of some words!