Most books worth reading don't start out scatologically, but this one does. Even so, Steve Rinella's American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon (2008) is enlightening and entertaining. It combines natural history and adventure,?presented in an altogether engaging style that had me riveted, just as did the author's first book, The Scavenger's Guide to Haute Cuisine (ONB June 2006). An avid reader and collector of literature on Bison bison, I found that I still had plenty to learn, not least of which is that the burning buffalo chips sometimes "smell of walking into a bathroom after someone smoked a joint." Seton, McHugh, Allen, Dary, Hornaday ("who loved a good buffalo chip fire"), Sandoz, Rorabacher, Gard, Branch and others somehow overlooked that telling metaphor.

The book's adventure part deals with Rinella's quest to hunt a free-ranging buffalo, of which there aren't many. Hunting opportunities for free-rangers are decidedly fewer. The quest began in the Madison Mountains of southwestern Montana. It played out with intrigue in the Wrangell Mountains of southcentral Alaska.

The book's natural history part deals with Rinella's quest to hunt for buffalo in history. In this, he had plenty of opportunity and was quite successful. He pursued the most recognized buffalo in the world?a Central Park menagerie, cage-dwelling offspring of parents from the Barnum Circus. Its moniker was Black Diamond. With the help of sculptor James Earle Fraser, Black Diamond's image appeared on the buffalo nickel, minted between 1913 and 1938. (Some buffalo nickels still are in circulation, but the model met an ignoble end in a New York City meat market in 1915.)?

Although unable to stalk successfully Black Diamond's mounted head, Rinella learned that the seed population for recovery of American bison in the West amounted to 15 animals from the Bronx Zoo. He learned that the bison was, in fact, commissary for many Native Americans in the North and West over centuries. He learned that, as is well known, Indians had utilitarian use for virtually every part of a buffalo and, as is not well acknowledged, Indians certainly did not use every part of every buffalo. He calculated that the bison population in the early 17^th century was numerous enough to have fed 300 million people for 10 days. He examined and reported on bison hide hunting (mouse robes and "beaver" hides) and bone collecting in those thrilling and wantonly wasteful days of yesteryear, and the ranching, trophy hunting and commercializing of bison today.???

The natural history quest delved into buffalo etiology, archeology (including a vain foray across the pond for DNA testing and radiocarbon-dating), physiology, anthropology and a host of other ologies. It is presented in a manner and with enough anecdotes (mainly from reliable sources) to keep any reader intrigued. That "manner," or literary technique, amounts to alternating between quests, at least until the end, when the hunt climaxed and, later, when Willem Defoe nearly showed up on a gravel bar along the Chetaslina River.

My only criticism of the book is some unnecessary detail of Rinella's struggles over and through southcentral Alaska's uncivilized landscape. There is a reason why that part of the world isn't blighted with tract homes and strip malls, and readers get it. And since even the animals that eke out a living there apparently aren't that familiar with the hunted area's terrain and its stunted, mean-spirited vegetation, the author's in-depth recounting of his perambulations serves only to bog-down our quest to see if he finds his bison and lives to write about it. My copy of the book didn't come with a map or a GPS unit; it should have.

This 288-page book wasn't penned as an Emersonian contradiction, i.e., documented for the sake of having something to record. It is a book that?documents and helps satisfy the author's compulsion to regain a sense of primitive America and to understand and experience what he and others consider North America's most important prey species ever, and Rinella's own atavistic nature.

American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon is a terrific read and is highly recommended. It was published by Spiegel and Grau of New York?and retails for $24.95.