America’s Great Plains once possessed among the grandest wildlife spectacles from the world, equaled only by such places while the Serengeti, the Masai Mara, or the veld of South Africa. Pronghorn antelope, grey wolves, bison, coyotes, crazy horses, and grizzly bears: less than two hundred years back these creatures existed in such large quantity that John James Audubon was shifted to write, “it really is impossible to describe or even conceive the huge multitudes of these animals.”

In a work that is at once a lyrical evocation of that lost splendor and a detailed natural history of these charismatic species of the historic Great Plains, veteran naturalist and outdoorsman Dan Flores draws a vivid family portrait of each of the animals in their glory-and tells the harrowing tale of what happened to them as a result of market hunters and ranchers, and ultimately, a federal government killing system in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.