I really enjoyed reading this book. Donald Grayson has done a superb job of presenting the existing scientific knowledge of the natural and human prehistory of the last 25,000 years in the North American Great Basin in an engaging and lively style. In my opinion, he achieves his objective of writing about archaeology, geology, paleobotany, and paleozoology in a way that makes the book both accessible to nonscientists and useful to professionals.
The book is organized into six parts, each of which contains one to three chapters. Part 1, entitled "The Great Basins," includes chapters on "Discovering a Great Basin" and "Modern Definitions of the Great Basin." In Chapter 1 Grayson recounts the history of exploration by European and American missionaries and trappers during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The history progresses rapidly from the story of the mythical Rio de San Buenaventura, which was thought to flow from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean at San Francisco Bay, to John C. Fremont's definition of the Great Basin in 1845 as a large area of internal drainage. In Chapter 2 Grayson describes how the boundaries of the Great Basin can be defined on the basis of the limits of internal drainage by surface streams, the geomorphology and geology, the plants and animals, or the Native American cultures of the region. Following what is perhaps most precise and easily visualized, Grayson selects the hydrographic definition as the working definition for his book while recognizing that all the "Great Basins" overlap and that all are dynamic and changing on different time scales.
Part 2, entitled "Some Ice Age Background," contains two chapters that provide a continental-to global-scale perspective on late Quaternary glaciers and sea level and peopling of the New World, and a discussion of the extinctions at the close of the Pleistocene. Grayson gives excellent reviews of some of the major questions in vertebrate paleontology and archaeology, including the environment and inhabitants of Beringia and the ice-free corridor, the earliest archaeological sites in the New World, the causes of mammal and bird extinctions, and the origin, character, and fate of Clovis culture.
The next three chapters (5,6, and 7) comprise Part 3, "The Late Ice Age Great Basin." Chapter 5 begins with a description of modern lakes and climate in the Great Basin, and this leads to discussions of some of the major late Pleistocene lakes, Bonneville, Lahontan, Chewaucan, and the Owens Lake-Death Valley system. The history of mountain glaciation is reviewed in the same chapter. Grayson points out relationships between the Pleistocene lakes, glaciers, and climate, and shows how various published estimates of paleotemperature and precipitation have been derived from the geologic records.
Chapters 6 and 7 are reviews of late Pleistocene vegetation and vertebrates of the Great Basin. Chapter 6 begins with a quote from the journal of California emigrant William Lewis Manly, who with his companions endured several months of deprivation