Anne Matthews (2)

The author followed two researchers/professors from New Jersey (Frank and Deborah Popper) through the “Great Plains” as they travelled to talk about their idea of a “Buffalo Commons”. (I believe this happened in the 1980s.) The Buffalo Commons was their idea to revert the land in places that are emptying of people, anyway, to their natural state and reintroduce buffalo. Of course, there was much push back from the people who did still live there.

I grew up in what would be the show more Canadian equivalent of the Great Plains, so I could picture some of the people. And yes, the towns are dying out and the majority of people left in them are mostly older. But of course, people will react badly; I think most people would. There were some nice descriptions of the areas they visited. Since this idea by the Poppers was from the 1980s, and the book was originally published in 1992, it has been a while; I read the 2nd edition, published in 2002. I expect that many more of the towns have died out since they did their tour, but I also suspect there are still some hanging on. show less

One would think from the subtitle, that this book is about (nocturnal) surveys of increasing urban wildlife. There's some of that in the beginning chapters. The remainder is a rambling series of essays concerning city planning, open space, NYC history, Santa Cruz island ecology, global warming, Mayan culture, NYC geology and glaciation, Penn Station debris, archaeological digs in Wiltshire - this book is all over the place. Most is mildly interesting.

The state of the academy at the end of the 20th century.