Chicago Botanic Garden

Education — Lenhardt Library

Current Books & Book Reviews

PHOTO: bookcover

Michael Forsberg.
Great Plains: American’s Lingering Wild.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.
Cloth, 260 pp., ISBN 978–0–226–25725–9, $45.00.

Stunningly gorgeous photographs by Michael Forsberg capture the beauty and diversity of the Great Plains, its animal life, and the effects of human habitation on this region in the center of North America. Consisting of more than one million square miles covering an area from Canada to Mexico, this landscape has been home to a diverse flora and fauna. Forsberg, wildlife biologist Dan O’Brien, and historical geographer David Wishart describe various habitats in this sensitive and informative text. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser describes his admiration for this work in this book’s foreward. Highly recommended.

— Marilyn K. Alaimo, garden writer and volunteer, Chicago Botanic Garden.