O'Neill, Dan. The Last Giant of Beringia: The Mystery of the Bering Land Bridge.

O'NEILL, Dan. The last giant of Beringia; the mystery of the Bering Land Bridge. Basic Books. 231p. illus, bibliog, index, c2004. 0465-05157-X. $15.00. SA

Most people have some hazy knowledge that a bridge of dry land once connected Alaska with Siberia across the Bering Strait, and that great woolly mammoths made their way across it to the American continent. Scientists assigned the name Berengia to the long-ago isthmus. But few are aware of the great size of the land bridge--nearly 1,000 miles wide--or that it has disappeared and reappeared repeatedly over the ages, or that the exchange of Pleistocene animals ran in both directions. But for Berengia, for instance, the horse would have become extinct eons ago.

As fascinating as this remote crossroads between the continents may be, the story of the American geologist who set out actually to prove the long-held presumption is even more so. Dave Hopkins was one of those captivating intellects who come along every once in a while, and fire the public's imagination. Hopkins was highly intelligent, decidedly eccentric, and almost compulsively inquisitive about everything that crossed his path. In explaining this man and his work, author Dan O'Neill takes the reader back to his subject's childhood and upraising, which show how parents with a deep curiosity about the world around them can guide a rambunctious kid into the intellectual heights. By the end of his career, Hopkins had invoked the tools of geography, climatology, biology and anthropology to pull together a convincing picture of this lively corner of our restless globe.

Author O'Neill is, fittingly, a prize-winning historian of Alaska, and his writing skills are fully up to his subject. This popular history is accessible to high school and adult readers. Raymond Puffer, Ph.D., Historian, Edwards AFB, Lancaster, CA