Overview

With its uncanny night howls, unrivaled ingenuity, and amazing resilience, the coyote is the stuff of legends. In Indian folktales it often appears as a deceptive trickster or a sly genius. But legends don't come close to capturing the incredible survival story of the coyote. As soon as Americans--especially white Americans--began ranching and herding in the West, they began working to destroy the coyote. Despite campaigns of annihilation employing poisons, gases, helicopters, and engineered epidemics, coyotes didn't just survive, they thrived, expanding across the continent from Anchorage, Alaska, to New York's Central Park. In the war between humans and coyotes, coyotes have won hands-down. Coyote America is both an environmental and a deep natural history of the coyote. It traces both the five-million-year-long biological story of an animal that has become the ""wolf"" in our backyards, as well as its cultural evolution from a preeminent spot in Native American religions to the hapless foil of the Road Runner. A deeply American tale, the story of the coyote in the American West and beyond is a sort of Manifest Destiny in reverse, with a pioneering hero whose career holds up an uncanny mirror to the successes and failures of American expansionism. An illuminating biography of this extraordinary animal, Coyote America isn't just the story of an animal's survival--it is one of the great epics of our time.

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9781504795920

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Reviews

""A masterly synthesis of scientific research and personal observation."" -- ""Wall Street Journal"" ""A wily writer meets his natural subject. With erudition, pathos, and seductive humor, Flores tells coyote stories that expose the animalism of Americans, and humans everywhere. The pleasure of his book is the feeling of being alive."" -- ""Jared Farmer, author of Trees in Paradise"" ""Flores' mix of edification and entertainment is a welcome antidote to a creature so often viewed with fear."" -- ""Publishers Weekly"" ""Highly recommended for natural history enthusiasts interested in moving beyond the conventional wisdom about coyotes."" -- ""Library Journal"" ""In this brilliant book, Flores traces the wane and wax of the coyote. Their story is interwoven with our story, but it is also like our story, that of a species that has faced challenges and overcome them. Read this book if you want to understand the wild canids among us and also, perhaps, a little bit more about yourself."" -- ""Rob Dunn, author of The Man Who Touched His Own Heart"" ""The coyote stories in this book are among the best, and Flores is a master storyteller."" -- ""Natural History"" ""Well written throughout and just the right length, Flores' book makes a welcome primer for living in a land in which coyotes roam freely."" -- ""Kirkus Reviews""

Author Information

Dan Flores is an American writer and historian who specializes in cultural and environmental studies of the American West. He is the author of numerous books on aspects of western United States history and was the A. B. Hammond Professor Emeritus of Western History at the University of Montana until he retired in 2014. Flores lives just outside Santa Fe, New Mexico. Elijah Alexander has worked professionally as an actor for over fifteen years. He has worked and lived in New York, where he performed in numerous productions, including the Tony Award-winning play Metamorphoses. He worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company for two years and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for two seasons, as well as regionally at various other theaters. In Los Angeles, he has worked on critically acclaimed productions of Sleuth, produced by Garry Marshall, and other works. His film and television credits include Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Emily's Reasons Why Not, JAG, Summerland, So NoTORIous, and Guiding Light. He was the voice of Vayne Solidor in Final Fantasy XII and has done several commercial voiceovers. He is currently the voice of Kenmore and has narrated more than ten audiobooks, including James Jones' acclaimed novel From Here to Eternity.

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