Mannahatta A Natural History of New York City

About this book

Sanderson and Boyer invite you to imagine what Manhattan would have looked like to its early explorers; before the skyscrapers, before the crowded sidewalks and the busy intersections of avenues and streets. On the pages of Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City, Sanderson and Boyer take readers on a journey of imagination by geographically matching, or georeferencing, a historical British Headquarts map with a map of modern Manhattan.

In addition, Sanderson examined volumes of historical documents and journals and was able to visually reconstruct, down to the city block, what Manhattan looked like four hundred years ago; from the forests of Times Square, to the wetlands of downtown, the meadows of Harlem and the Upper West Side, and the nomadic tribe settlements of Chinatown and the Upper East Side.

Although the lush forests, rolling hills, and flowing streams have long disappeared, Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City brings this wild island of Henry Hudson's era to life through insightful text, maps, illustrations and computer visualisations. Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City is not only a view of the past, but also an inspiration for a new vision of the future.

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Biography

Eric W. Sanderson is the Associate Director for Landscape Ecology and Geographic Analysis in the Living Landscape Program of the Wildlife Conservation Society at the Bronx Zoo. He is an expert in the application of geographic principles and techniques to problems in wildlife, landscape and ecological conservation, and has published numerous articles on the subject.

Markley Boyer has worked with the Wildlife Conservation Society creating maps and visualizations for a new series of national parks in Gabon. He is also a silversmith, exploring similar themes of geomorphology in metal and wood.