The Book Prize Index

Wild New World: The Epic Story of Animals and People in America

Dan Flores

Winner of the 2023 Rachel Carson Environment Book Award Winner of the 2023 National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History Literature Shortlisted for the 2023 Phi Beta Kappa Society Ralph Waldo Emerson Award A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2022 A deep-time history of animals and humans in North America, by the best-selling and award-winning author of Coyote America. In 1908, near Folsom, New Mexico, a cowboy discovered the remains of a herd of extinct giant bison. By examining flint points embedded in the bones, archeologists later determined that a band of humans had killed and butchered the animals 12,450 years ago. This discovery vastly expanded America’s known human history but also revealed the long-standing danger Homo sapiens presented to the continent’s evolutionary richness. Distinguished author Dan Flores’s ambitious history chronicles the epoch in which humans and animals have coexisted in the “wild new world” of North America—a place shaped both by its own grand evolutionary forces and by momentous arrivals from Asia, Africa, and Europe. With portraits of iconic creatures such as mammoths, horses, wolves, and bison, Flores describes the evolution and historical ecology of North America like never before. The arrival of humans precipitated an extraordinary disruption of this teeming environment.

Nature & EnvironmentNature & Environment · medium confidenceNature & Environment81 signalsLlm Classifier: Nature & Environment -> Nature & EnvironmentGoogle Books: Science -> ScienceKeyword Classifier: Arts & Criticism -> Arts & CriticismNatural History & AnimalsScience & DiscoveryEnvironment, Conservation & PollutionEssays & Cultural Criticism

Award History

1 wins · 1 total

AwardYearResultCategory / Notes
Rachel Carson Environment Book Award2023WinnerOfficial source
View all award history (1)
Experimental book profileGenerated by GPT-5.4 nano · may contain inaccuracies

This is an unverified interpretation of the catalog description, offered as an opt-in discovery experiment—not as bibliographic fact.

  1. 01 Central figures

    None extracted with sufficient confidence.

  2. 02 Central places

    • North America86%
    Show lower-confidence suggestions

    These suggestions did not meet the normal display threshold and are more likely to be wrong.

    • Folsom, New Mexico62%

  3. 03 Suggested argument

    The arrival of humans in North America precipitated extraordinary disruption to its environment and posed long-standing danger to the continent’s evolutionary richness.

    Model confidence 60%

  4. 04 Reading orientation

    45 / 100 academic

    Trade / academic crossover

    An estimate of intended readership and scholarly apparatus—not quality or importance.

Confidence percentages are the model's own estimates. Profile confidence: 60%.