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Published May 2018
288 pages
Genre: History, Current Affairs and Religion
Publication Information
From the author of Apocalyptic Planet comes a vivid travelogue through prehistory, that traces the arrival of the first people in North America at least twenty thousand years ago and the artifacts that tell of their lives and fates.
In Atlas of a Lost World, Craig Childs upends our notions of where these people came from and who they were. How they got here, persevered, and ultimately thrived is a story that resonates from the Pleistocene to our modern era. The lower sea levels of the Ice Age exposed a vast land bridge between Asia and North America, but the land bridge was not the only way across. Different people arrived from different directions, and not all at the same time.
The first explorers of the New World were few, their encampments fleeting. The continent they reached had no people but was inhabited by megafauna - mastodons, giant bears, mammoths, saber-toothed cats, five-hundred-pound panthers, enormous bison, and sloths that stood one story tall. The first people were hunters - Paleolithic spear points are still encrusted with the proteins of their prey - but they were wildly outnumbered and many would themselves have been prey to the much larger animals.
Atlas of a Lost World chronicles the last millennia of the Ice Age, the violent oscillations and retreat of glaciers, the clues and traces that document the first encounters of early humans, and the animals whose presence governed the humans' chances for survival. A blend of science and personal narrative reveals how much has changed since the time of mammoth hunters, and how little. Across unexplored landscapes yet to be peopled, readers will see the Ice Age, and their own age, in a whole new light.
"Starred Review. With simple, beautiful sketches by fellow traveler Gilman, Childs's account will fire the imagination of ordinary readers as well as anthropologists and prehistorians." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. A tight weave of professional findings, anecdotes, site visits, and explanations behind ancient artifacts make this book both engaging and indispensable for those with an interest in prehistory." - Kirkus
"A very engaging read that allows readers a real glimpse into the prehistoric world; Childs ably transforms archaeological theories into relatable concepts." - Library Journal
"Childs' first-hand encounters and vivid prose make his telling of these pivotal events read more like a thriller than a stale account of dusty artifacts." - Neil Shubin, author of Your Inner Fish
This information about Atlas of a Lost World was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Craig Childs is the author of Apocalyptic Planet. He has been a regular commentator for NPR's Morning Edition, and his work has appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Men's Journal, Outside, The Sun, and Orion Magazine. Awards he has received include the Ellen Meloy Desert Writers Award, the Rowell Award for the Art of Adventure, the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award, and, for his body of work, the 2003 Spirit of the West Award.
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