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A celebration of the extraordinary lost natural wonder of the eastern U.S.--once the center of American wildness before its despoliation--and a lively tour through recent efforts to return elk, bison, wolves, and other creatures to their verdant native landscapes.Before skyscrapers and smokestacks rose across the eastern U.S., elk, bison, wolves, and cougars roamed. Typically imagined as icons of the West, these large mammals are in fact native to what was once a kind of Eden--towering forests in the Northeast, rolling prairies in the Midwest, and cypress swamps in the Deep South. But, in mere decades, industrialization and unregulated hunting brought these emblems of the East to the precipice of extinction; by the 1950s, squirrels were one of the few wild mammals an easterner was likely to encounter.Now, even as the climate and biodiversity crises loom, eastern wildlife are staging an unlikely comeback. Herds of bison graze on Illinois prairies, red wolves lurk in North Carolina's coa

From the acclaimed film critic and New York Times bestselling biographer of Paul Newman, the definitive biography of Hollywood legend Clint Eastwood, the most prolific and versatile actor-director in the history of the medium, and an indelible fixture of American culture.C-L-I-N-T. In that short, sharp syllable, there is an emblem of American manhood and morality and sheer bloody-minded will, for better and worse, on screen and off, for more than sixty years. Whether he's holding a pistol, an orangutan, or a boxing glove; whether he's facing down bad guys on a western street (Old West or new, no matter); staring through the lens of a camera; or accepting one of his thirteen Oscars (including two for Best Picture); he is as blunt, curt, and solid as his name, a star of the old school stripe and one of the most prolific and accomplished directors of his time, a man of rock and iron and brute force: Clint. To tell the story of Clint Eastwood is to tell the story of nearly a century of Ame