It is a shame MIT press could not ensure that this book downloaded properly so it could be read without frustration. Probably a book that needs to be read as a paper copy giving the illustrations. What I did manage to read was rather a mish-mash of science and popular opinion. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance digital ARC.

I wasn't able to read the ARC of this book using text-to-speech, so instead, I tried listening to the audio book. About an hour into it, I gave up. The tone is academic but the content lacks scientific rigor. Clearly the authors are passionate about the subject. It's possible to be passionate yet unbiased, but that's not the case in this book.

I love the idea of rewilding. But the ideas presented in this book are so one-sided that I was agape. The past 500 years have shown us the dangers of introducing exotic species into new ecosystems. (Rhinos ranging free in the southwest US—what could possibly go wrong?) I want to hear the pros and cons, not this Pollyanna view of introduced species living in harmony with ecosystems that have lost their native megafauna.

Then there's the argument about why the North American megafauna went extinct in the first place. These authors favor the "overkill" rather than the "overchill" theory. But maybe both are wrong. Maybe the arrival of Homo sapiens, with their ability to intensively exploit their environment, simply overwhelmed the megafauna. With their low reproductive rates,. the megafauna couldn't compete. They went extinct because of natural selection. Can we really expect introduced megafauna to flourish in North America when there are many times more Homo sapiens living here now than there were when the native megafauna went extinct?

This was the kind of discussion I expected from this book. Instead, this seems to be a treatise advocating that we turn back the clock thousands of years, rather than dealing with the fact that human population is likely to plateau at around 11 billion. Admittedly, I didn't finish the book. Maybe the topic was explored more deeply later on. But with the shallow treatment of the subject matter, combined with the dry style, the first 20% or so of the book didn't hold my interest.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.

Rewilding is an information rich book packed with beautiful photos and illustrations. The tone is at times academic and at times popular science. While this could turn off readers who want a book to be wholly one or the other, it worked for me.

Rewilding is a comprehensive, passionate work. The authors define concepts and use the illustrations to reinforce key concepts. As a reader coming to the book with some familiarity but no depth in the topic this structure was effective and accessible. I recommend it for readers seeking a grounding in the history of restoring ecosystems.

Thank you MIT Press and Net Galley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This book is far more scientific than I expected. The description of the book was actually more enjoyable to me than the book. For naturalist's and environmentalist's, I would give this book 5 stars. For the rest of us, I would give it two, but because of all the work and truth in it, I give it three.
I thank NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC from MIT publishing.

Nature works better if left to do as it pleases. Go figure.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing this ARC in exchange for my honest review!

This book is very interesting, and kind of hard to review. It reads in between a textbook and a popular science book, which are two extremes I've never seen crossed before. I really enjoyed the illustrations and diagrams of megafauna and ecological processes throughout, but I think I was hoping for something more narrative in terms of the writing. I found the beginning parts about basic ecological/geological history hard to get into, but necessary to truly understand rewilding. And once the book actually started talking about rewilding, I was fascinated.

Let me begin by saying that everyone who says this book’s illustrations and layout are beautiful is absolutely right. As a print book, I suspect this would be gorgeous. I received an eARC from NetGalley and MIT Press, and it was a little harder to read on my phone screen, but that isn’t why I didn’t finish Rewilding. Rather, as beautiful and perhaps comprehensive a review of this subject as it is, I found Paul Jepson and Cain Blythe’s writing style incompatible with how I like my popular science books.

I first came upon the concept of rewilding when I read How to Clone a Mammoth last year. Beth Shapiro provided a great overview of the state of the ancient DNA field, and she mentioned many of the rewilding experiments that this book covers in more detail. I think it’s a fascinating and perhaps worthwhile enterprise; I want to be clear that I’m not objecting to this book based on its authors’ ideas (so far as I got through reading them). Instead, I didn’t appreciate their voice here.

When I read a science book, I’m happy for the authors to inject their own thoughts, opinions, and personality into their writing. However, I want them to be able to separate those biases from how they present the science itself. Jepson and Blythe don’t do that here.

Here’s an early example that raised my hackles: they present the overkill hypothesis as a settled fact within the scientific community. They laud Paul Martin as a visionary, a “time traveller” who has “the imagination and command of facts to think across eras and continents.” When they touch on “resistance to the overkill theory” they say, “In retrospect, it is interesting to ask why there was so much resistance to the overkill hypothesis” and then go on to say it was inexorably logical and blame conservation movements in the 1980s. Ok.

Look, I am not a scientist. I don’t even have a particularly deep knowledge of this subject as a layperson. But I can use Google, and I do have some sweet critical thinking skills, and literally the first result when I google “overkill hypothesis” is this meta-analysis from 2018. It concludes that the overkill hypothesis enjoys excellent support among ecologists, like Jepson and Blythe, but remains controversial among archaeologists, and it points to a breakdown in communication between these disciplines as a result for the discrepancy. Note that I’m not saying Jepson and Blythe are wrong to champion the overkill hypothesis—I just take issue with how they present it as more settled than it is, and how their anemic attempt at presenting “both sides” criticism makes it seem like critics are unreasonable or biased while they are not.

As I continued reading, I encountered more writing that left me on edge. Chapter 4 begins to talk about the rewilding experiments of past decades and says, “A few of these scientists had the combination of vision, boldness, powers of persuasion, and opportunity to try out new approaches….” When Jepson and Blythe describe the Oostvaardersplassen experiment, they say, “Frans Vera is someone with a genius for looking at things differently and assembling disparate forms of evidence to develop, test, and articulate new ideas. He is also fearless when it comes to challenging mainstream thinking….” I cannot stand this level of aggrandizement in a popular science book!

It is one thing to laud the accomplishments of scientists. Praise Marie Curie all you want for her contributions to theories of radioactivity in the face of institutional sexism. By all means, tell me that Vera did some good ecological research into rewilding. But stop trying to paint individual scientists as mavericks who challenge a system that is somehow otherwise going to hold back scientific progress. Sure, I am open to critiquing the conservatism within science—but that’s not the same thing as saying, “this person is a visionary!!1111.”

So I stopped reading after that. Your mileage may vary. As I said at the beginning, the illustrations and layout of this book are great—props to whatever designers worked on it. There is bound to be a lot of good, accurate, useful information to be learned here when it comes to environmental history, ecology, and the subject of rewilding in particular. Nevertheless, I personally could not stomach the biased writing any longer, and rather than trudge through the remaining seventy pages or so, I decided to call it a day.

I’m not panning the book to the point of saying don’t read it, but I hope that my review provides some perspective as you go into it.

I received a free e-ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to NetGalley & the publisher for the copy.

This book is *beautifully* illustrated and packed full of information. The concept that each generation is accepting the nature of their childhood as the "true" ideal that we're endeavoring to return to, and subconsciously accepting the damage of previous generations was mind-blowing to me, but so incredibly true.

I might not recommend this to a complete layman/novice, but if you have an interest in the ecosystem and rewilding then I think this is a fantastic overview of the history and the applications. I would definitely recommend this to anyone pursuing a degree in wildlife biology, botany or environmental sciences - or to anyone working in those fields today.

This is an extremely well-written and beautifully illustrated book on the ecological concept of "Rewilding". It's a thorough examination of the topic, from the history and framework, to the potential for the future. It's helpful, but not necessary to have a background in the sciences, particularly Biology and Ecology. The background would be helpful in fully understanding the concepts described in the book, but the authors do a great job of explaining the concepts and the illustrations are amazing. I would recommend this book for any student of Ecology, especially as an additional narrative to conservation and preservation. The books look at a "radical new way" of ecological restoration will give students another lens to think critically about the concepts.

Thank you to NetGalley and MIT Press for an advanced reader e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

At time bouncing between reading like a textbook and reading like a pop-culture mass market book, Rewinding is a good introduction to the concept of rewinding for anyone who may simply want to learn what it is or those who are considering a deeper dive into the subject. If, like me, you lack a scientific/biologic/ecologic background, you may be pulling up your google app a bit. As someone with no background in the science presented here, I cannot comment on the soundness of the research presented, but it's not overly heady or dense. Jepson and Blythe find a way to present a great deal of detailed information in a manner that is approachable but not too simplistic.

Ecologists want to see a healthier planet, and some have found a path to this recovery through rewilding -- that is, reintroducing species to their native habitats after being wiped out. And as it turns out, there are wildly different approaches to this truly radical technique. From delicate moves (like replacing an extinct tortoise species with a similar one in the Mauritian Islands) to sledgehammer action (think bringing back mammoths), rewilding begs the question, "How? And more importantly, should we?"

"Rewilding" is a great introduction to the topic, which is multifaceted in the extreme. This book explores the history of rewilding -- what's worked, what's failed, and what's on the horizon -- as well as the ripple effects. As an armchair ecologist, most of these approaches were new to me. But I did recognize a few rewilding efforts, including Pleistocene Park and the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone. I appreciated the mentions of plant and insect rewilding, too, which are often eclipsed by megaherbivores and other showy species.

While it is intended as an overview and introduction, this book sometimes get technical, so a background in biology would be helpful for most readers. The language drifts between pop sci and textbook, but there are lots of great illustrations to help clear up sticky concepts. Plenty of beautiful photographs and well-placed diagrams.

"Rewilding" is a fantastic conversation starter, leaving the reader with lots of food for thought. An excellent foundation for building new knowledge on this tangled topic.

Thanks to NetGalley, the authors, and the publisher for providing a copy of this ebook in exchange for my honest review.

It's always interesting talking to people about rewilding. Should we, as people, interfere with nature anymore than we've already done? Can we ever make things right again? I am not so sure if we can, but I hold some hope.

This book looks at rewilding from different angles. There's the science, to back the theories up, the opinions of various people involved and some great examples of successful rewilding examples like the Oostvaardersplassen in the Netherlands and the reintroduction of the wolf in Yellowstone Park. The text is supported by helpful diagrams and beautiful photography. An useful book and definitely recommended for biologists and people interested in conservation of natural areas.

A very good introductory guide to the newish scientific endeavour of rewilding. Having a background in biology would certainly help understand the content, but the book is written in a clear and concise way that many lay-people could also easily follow. Photos and diagrams are used to effectively support and visualise the text.

Unfortunately, this book would not download into a readable copy in either my Kindle nor my Adobe reader. The text was jumbled, and very, very small. It's a shame, because this is a subject that I have a great interest in. Therefore, I cannot offer a review to any of my usual sites. If it's possible to come up with a readable copy, I would love to read and review it.