Non-fiction

American beauty

John Dugdale on The Eternal Frontier by Tim Flannery | A Circle of Sisters by Judith Flanders

The Eternal Frontier
Tim Flannery
Vintage £8.99

Flannery's dazzlingly ambitious ecological history of North America covers a vast sweep from 65m years ago to the present, with accounts of geological and climatic changes punctuated by telling examples of their impact - and by personal anecdotes and sketches of legendary fossil-hunters, which make this far more engrossing than a textbook. Weird mammals seem to be the Australian biologist's specialist subject, and he depicts them vividly; but the chapters that follow homo sapiens' arrival are just as assured, culminating in provocative thoughts on whether Americans can learn to cherish biodiversity despite the frontier legacy of over-exploitation of nature.

A Circle of Sisters
Judith Flanders
Penguin, £7.99

This group biography of the four Macdonald sisters enthrals on several levels. Primarily it's a real-life soap opera about a Victorian family who, just like the Forsytes, divide into business-oriented and arty wings; but as the quartet includes the wife of Edward Burne-Jones and the mothers of Rudyard Kipling and Stanley Baldwin, it also provides offbeat portraits of the painter, writer and politician, seen largely unflatteringly through the eyes of their female relatives. And running through the narrative are foretastes of Flanders' next project: a study of Victorian domestic life, with absorbing digressions on fashions, food, housekeeping and etiquette.

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