A Chorus of Buffalo: A Personal Portrait of an American Icon

by Ruth Rudner

Ruth Rudner is in a long tradition of American nature writers, and A Chorus of Buffalo is her lyrical, finely hewn consideration of the American bison’s struggle to exist amid the harsh realities of human society. Describing the lives of these fragile beasts with wide-ranging depth and meticulous detail, Rudner considers buffalo from multiple vantages—as a wild animal in Yellowstone National Park, as a ranched animal on the Great Plains and on Indian Reservations, as the revered provider of the necessities of life for Indian people, as a circus performer, as a symbol of the earth’s struggle for integrity. She charts the buffalo’s affliction with brucellosis, a disease that puts them in the crosshairs of wildlife politics in the American West, a milieu in which ranchers are pitted against environmentalists, bureaucrats against Native Americans, and even government agencies against each other. “Framed by the earth,” Rudner writes, “[the buffalo] makes a picture so big, it can only be seen with the heart.” This first paperback edition of the celebration of the American buffalo merits a permanent place on any wildlife lover’s shelf beside classics by such writers as John Muir, Peter Matthiessen, Terry Tempest Williams, Barry Lopez, and Edward Hoagland.

192 pages, Paperback

First published December 8, 2003