American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon

In 2005, Steven Rinella won a lottery permit to hunt for a single wild buffalo in the Alaskan wilderness. Despite the odds, Rinella managed to kill a buffalo on a snow-covered mountainside and then raft the meat back to civilisation, trailed by grizzly bears and suffering from hypothermia. American Buffalois the story of Rinella's hunt. But beyond that, it is a chronicle of the many ways in which the buffalo has shaped American identity. Rinella takes us across the continent in search of the buffalo's past, present, and future- from buffalo jumps where Native Americans once ran buffalo over cliffs by the thousands, to an abattoir turned fashion mecca in Manhattan, where a depressed buffalo named Black Diamond met his fate after serving as the model for the American nickel. Rinella is the perfect guide for a book that combines outdoor adventure with a blend of facts and observations about history, biology, and the natural world. American Buffalo is both a riveting yarn and a book of environmental and historical significance.