Splendor in the tall grass

Looking for a wilder America? Forget crowded zoos and tame game parks. For a glimpse of magnificent, fast-disappearing, natural America, grab this sleek, lavishly photographed, fact-jammed guidebook and start planning a tall-grass odyssey.

As Jones and Cushman tell it, the lone prairie is anything but lonely or dull. History is manifest everywhere. Horses whinny and bullets whiz as stick-figure Indians defend their tepees on carved petroglyphs. Ruins of mines, ranches and silent Indian burial mounds recall the glories and vicissitudes of America’s westward expansion.

Animals abound. Pronghorn herds race through glowing fields of evening primrose in Montana. In Nebraska, 30,000 trumpeting sandhill cranes flock skyward as they have done for more than 6 million years. Saucer-sized, hairy tarantulas stop traffic in Texas. All that and more await the adventurer willing to take a walk on America’s little-known wild side.

-- Susan Dworski