{"title":"Patricia Tyson Stroud","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"bitterroot-book-patricia-tyson-stroud-9780812249842","title":"Bitterroot","description":"In America's early national period, Meriwether Lewis was a towering figure. Selected by Thomas Jefferson to lead the expedition to explore the Louisiana Purchase, he was later rewarded by Jefferson with the governorship of the entire Louisiana Territory. Yet within three years, plagued by controversy over administrative expenses, Lewis found his reputation and career in tatters. En route to Washington to clear his name, he died mysteriously in a crude cabin on the Natchez Trace in Tennessee. Was he a suicide, felled by his own alcoholism and mental instability? Most historians have agreed. Patricia Tyson Stroud reads the evidence to posit another, even darker, ending for Lewis.  Stroud uses Lewis's find, the bitterroot flower, with its nauseously pungent root, as a symbol for his reputation as a purported suicide. It was this reputation that Thomas Jefferson promulgated in the memoir he wrote prefacing the short account of Lewis's historic expedition published five years after his death. Without investigation of any kind, Jefferson, Lewis's mentor from boyhood, reiterated undocumented assertions of Lewis's serious depression and alcoholism.  That Lewis was the courageous leader of the first expedition to explore the continent from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean has been overshadowed by presuppositions about the nature of his death. Stroud peels away the layers of misinformation and gossip that have obscured Lewis's rightful reputation. Through a retelling of his life, from his resourceful youth to the brilliance of his leadership and accomplishments as a man, Bitterroot shows that Jefferson's mystifying assertion about the death of his protÉgÉ is the long-held bitter root of the Meriwether Lewis story.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49588339671313,"sku":"GOR013484231","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50763157766417,"sku":"CIN0812249844G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53114275332369,"sku":"NIN9780812249842","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0812249844.jpg?v=1770977638"},{"product_id":"man-who-had-been-king-book-patricia-tyson-stroud-9780812238723","title":"The Man Who Had Been King","description":"In The Man Who Had Been King, Patricia Tyson Stroud provides a rich account of the life of Napoleon's brother Joseph Bonaparte in the United States, detailing how his palatial estate, gardens, and art collection made him a key figure in the importation of European taste to America.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49634165260561,"sku":"GOR013625511","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50321065115921,"sku":"CIN0812238729G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51721188540689,"sku":"CIN0812238729VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53518239531281,"sku":"NIN9780812238723","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0812238729.jpg?v=1763482107"},{"product_id":"man-who-had-been-king-book-patricia-tyson-stroud-9780812225167","title":"The Man Who Had Been King","description":"Joseph Bonaparte, King of Naples and Spain, claimed that he had never wanted the overpowering roles thrust upon him by his illustrious younger brother Napoleon. Left to his own devices, he would probably have been a lawyer in his native Corsica, a country gentleman with leisure to read the great literature he treasured and oversee the maintenance of his property. When Napoleon's downfall forced Joseph into exile, he was able to become that country gentleman at last, but in a place he could scarcely have imagined.  It comes as a surprise to most people that Joseph spent seventeen years in the United States following Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo. In The Man Who Had Been King, Patricia Tyson Stroud has written a rich account-drawing on unpublished Bonaparte family letters-of this American exile, much of it passed in regal splendor high above the banks of the Delaware River in New Jersey.  Upon his escape from France in 1815, Joseph arrived in the new land with a fortune in hand and shortly embarked upon building and fitting out the magnificent New Jersey estate he called Point Breeze. The palatial house was filled with paintings and sculpture by such luminaries as David, Canova, Rubens, and Titian. The surrounding park extended to 1,800 acres of luxuriously landscaped gardens, with twelve miles of carriage roads, an artificial lake, and a network of subterranean tunnels that aroused much local speculation.  Stroud recounts how Joseph became friend and host to many of the nation's wealthiest and most cultivated citizens, and how his art collection played a crucial role in transmitting high European taste to America. He never ceased longing for his homeland, however. Despite his republican airs, he never stopped styling himself as \"the Count de Survilliers,\" a noble title he fabricated on his first flight from France in 1814, when Napoleon was exiled to Elba, nor did he ever learn more than rudimentary English. Although he would repeatedly plead with his wife to join him, he was not a faithful husband, and Stroud narrates his affairs with an American and a Frenchwoman, both of whom bore him children. Yet he continued to feel the separation from his two legitimate daughters keenly and never stopped plotting to ensure the dynastic survival of the Bonapartes.  In the end, the man who had been king returned to Europe, where he was eventually interred next to the tomb of his brother in Les Invalides. But the legacy of Joseph Bonaparte in America remains, and it is this that Patricia Tyson Stroud has masterfully uncovered in a book that is sure to appeal to lovers of art and gardens and European and American history.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49742470938897,"sku":"NGR9780812225167","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51008186450193,"sku":"NIN9780812225167","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0812225163.jpg?v=1751107526"},{"product_id":"thomas-say-new-world-naturalist-book-patricia-tyson-stroud-9780812231038","title":"Thomas Say, New World Naturalist","description":"\u003cp\u003eExplorer, pioneering natural scientist, and a founder of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, Thomas Say (1787-1834) devoted his life to establishing the authority of American scientists to name and describe native flora and fauna (until then, specimens were sent to Europe for that purpose). He was the first to name and describe for science the coyote, the plains gray wolf, and the swift fox, in addition to several western birds and many amphibians, and he ranks as one of the great naturalists of early America.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA Barra Foundation Book\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50202701299985,"sku":"CIN0812231031G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0812231031.jpg?v=1751395911"},{"product_id":"emperor-of-nature-book-patricia-tyson-stroud-9780812235463","title":"The Emperor of Nature","description":"Cited as one of the Best Books of 2000 by Library Journal In the early years of the Republic, America was a land filled with uncharted flora and fauna, a treasure-trove for every naturalist in the world. One such naturalist was Charles-Lucien Bonaparte, Prince of Musignano and Canino, nephew of the Emperor Napoleon. Called the father of American descriptive ornithology, Charles-Lucien was the author of the monumental American Ornithology: or, The Natural History of Birds Inhabiting the United States not given by Wilson. Born in 1803 to Lucien, a younger brother of Napoleon, Charles spent his early childhood in Rome, where his father, an ardent republican and opponent of the Empire, had sought papal protection. In 1810, at the height of the Napoleonic Wars, the family left Italy with the intent of emigrating to the United States; instead, they were apprehended by the British off Sardinia and taken to England, where for four years they lived publicly as celebrated captives. Charles was privately tutored, learning English and concentrating on his favorite subject, natural history. With his wife-and first cousin-Zenaide, Charles joined his uncle Joseph in exile in Bordentown, New Jersey, in 1822. Stroud recreates the lives of these not quite Americanized Bonapartes in splendid and startling detail. Point Breeze, Joseph's estate, encompassed 1700 acres dotted with formal French gardens and a large artificial lake stocked with imported European swans. Here Charles hunted and studied birds, and encountered such purely American animals as the skunk and the rattlesnake. It was here, too, that American Ornithology took shape, and that he first collaborated with the still-unknown John James Audubon. When Charles left America in 1828, he traveled to Italy and wrote works of comparative zoology, as well as a magisterial study of the mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and fish of that country. Throughout the next decades he was instrumental in setting up scientific congresses in Italy, where scientists the world over were welcome. Yet he was also involved in the growing republican movement in Italy, and it was because of this that he was forced to flee the country and eventually settle in France under the protection of his cousin, the hated Napoleon III. Based extensively on archival sources, including many unpublished letters still in the possession of the Bonaparte family, The Emperor of Nature is the first biography ever written of Charles-Lucien Bonaparte. Forced by the circumstances of his birth to be a perpetual visitor, he nonetheless carved out a place for himself in the science of the natural world. It is at once a compelling story of the fate of Europe's imperial family, and an impressive contribution to the history of nineteenth-century science.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50368337772817,"sku":"CIN0812235460G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53568272892177,"sku":"GOR014965326","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53590810263825,"sku":"GOR010862103","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0812235460.jpg?v=1750979236"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-patricia-tyson-stroud.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}