Bison: Monarch of the Plains

Bison-Monarch of the Plains. Great photos with enough of the history on the American Bison for the casual reader. Very good coffee table book too. Nicely appointed. If you want to get more deeply into the American Bison, then read David A. Dary's "THE BUFFALO BOOK". Gary Skaar

Icould not be happier with this book. I was in particular looking for pictures of buffalo and this book excels in wonderful photos. It is a good size and the writing is excellent too. I am an artist and it has offered me details of the animals that are hard to find.

I found this book to be interesting, with a lot of nice pictures, but sort of short on information. It's 128 pages long, many of them full page photos (which no doubt cut down the number of possible information pages)and is divided into several sections. Much of the book is done from a sort of American Indian perspective telling of their traditions and uses, conflicts with the white man. Later on you get some stuff on the buffalo hunting period, that's also interesting if not entirely error free (in one place the dates are given as 1934 and 1947, that should be 18, not 19. They also call buffalo rifles .50 caliber when one photo clearly shows mention of other calibers).Apparently a huge number of animals were killed even in the early pre- 1870's years.The last part of the book tells of efforts to save the remainders of the great herds and how that's worked out as well as hopes for the future.I'd liked to have had much more information (there are notes & a reading list at books end)but did really appreciate the large selection of photographs, most of them modern but some historical, that included not only the buffalo but some of the things made from or related to them. This is the real reason to buy the book.

This is a beautiful book, very well done. The photos in it are excellent. We give this book out to our Speakers at conferences. It is a great coffee table book.

If you love the Great Plains and have a heart for the prairie, this book will delight you. The photography in here is outstanding. After working with buffalo earlier this year, this was a book I had to get. Some of the photos, including the cover photo, bring not only the sights but also the smells and sounds of the giant herds to mind. These photos are worth more than 1,000 words... because they speak to my prairie heart.