American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon

In 2005, Steven Rinella won a lottery permit to hunt for a single wild buffalo in the Alaskan wilderness. Despite the odds, Rinella managed to kill a buffalo on a snow-covered mountainside and then raft the meat back to civilisation, trailed by grizzly bears and suffering from hypothermia. American Buffalo is the story of Rinellas hunt. But beyond that, it is a chronicle of the many ways in which the buffalo has shaped American identity. Rinella takes us across the continent in search of the buffalos past, present, and future: from buffalo jumps where Native Americans once ran buffalo over cliffs by the thousands, to an abattoir turned fashion mecca in Manhattan, where a depressed buffalo named Black Diamond met his fate after serving as the model for the American nickel. Rinella is the perfect guide for a book that combines outdoor adventure with a blend of facts and observations about history, biology, and the natural world. American Buffalo is both a riveting yarn and a book of environmental and historical significance.