Author Description

Even after two hundred years, Lewis and Clark's famous journey from St. Louis to the Pacific continues to capture our imagination. Many people have followed their trek westward, pitting themselves against the elements, imagining they were facing the challenges those two explorers encountered. In Our Natural History, Daniel Botkin, a scientist who feels a natural kinship with Lewis and Clark, uses their experiences to explode the myths that keep us from making wise decisions about our present and future. Writing about grizzlies, buffalo, salmon, rivers, forests, and Indians, Botkin shows us that the nature of nature is change, and that we must study and understand the complexity of that change instead of simply yearning for a past that never was. He challenges the myth of a pristine natural past, one that was in perfect and unchanging balance, as he revisits key points on the Lewis and Clark journey. Botkin weaves his own experiences as a naturalist and scientist in the wilderness throughout the book, showing how the most sophisticated science of today ultimately depends on the same kind of observation that Lewis and Clark accomplished. Writing in the tradition of great naturalists, this leading scientist will change forever the way we think about nature and our role in it.