RaveThe Los Angeles Review of BooksProulx satirizes the hubristic belief that we can swim against history’s rip current without getting sucked under and out to sea ... Proulx seeks to fundamentally alter our understanding of American history, asking us to consider the transnational aspects of New World economic development, the ancient class structures from which that economic development emerged, and the environmental impact of it all. That Proulx does this without the usual dopey Romanticism of most ecological writing is astonishing ... Barkskins perfects the balance between 'the study of history and marshaling of facts' and the careful portrayal of individual lives.
