The Naturalist by Darrin Lunde

The Naturalist by Darrin Lunde

Winner of the inaugural Theodore Roosevelt Association Book Prize

A captivating account of how Theodore Roosevelt's lifelong passion for the natural world set the stage for America's wildlife conservation movement and determined his legacy as a founding father of today's museum naturalism.

No U.S. president is more popularly associated with nature and wildlife than is Theodore Roosevelt-prodigious hunter, tireless adventurer, and ardent conservationist. We think of him as a larger-than-life original, yet in The Naturalist, Darrin Lunde has firmly situated Roosevelt's indomitable curiosity about the natural world in the tradition of museum naturalism.

As a child, Roosevelt actively modeled himself on the men (including John James Audubon and Spencer F. Baird) who pioneered this key branch of biology by developing a taxonomy of the natural world-basing their work on the experiential study of nature. The impact that these scientists and their trailblazing methods had on Roosevelt shaped not only his audacious personality but his entire career, informing his work as a statesman and ultimately affecting generations of Americans' relationship to this country's wilderness.

Drawing on Roosevelt's diaries and travel journals as well as Lunde's own role as a leading figure in museum naturalism today, The Naturalist reads Roosevelt through the lens of his love for nature. From his teenage collections of birds and small mammals to his time at Harvard and political rise, Roosevelt's fascination with wildlife and exploration culminated in his triumphant expedition to Africa, a trip which he himself considered to be the apex of his varied life.

With narrative verve, Lunde brings his singular experience to bear on our twenty-sixth president's life and constructs a perceptively researched and insightful history that tracks Roosevelt's maturation from exuberant boyhood hunter to vital champion of serious scientific inquiry.

Darrin Lunde has worked as a mammalogist at the American Museum of Natural History and at the Smithsonian Institute. His work has brought him into contact with all kinds of animals, big and small, throughout the remote forests of South America, Africa, and Asia where he camped for months at a time to survey species diversity and to discover new species. He is the author of Hello, Bumblebee Bat, a Theodor Seuss Geisel Award Honor Book, After the Kill, and other books about animals. He lives in Washington, DC.

Kelsey is an illustrator and lover of all things nature. Her work centers around an array of natural history subjects, often inspired by the myriad ways humans connect with and study the natural world. She received her first scat identification book around the age of 10 and loved that it helped her learn to identify the natural world around her. Her gouache illustrations focus on natural history subjects like taxonomy, biodiversity, and taxidermy, as well as related subjects like astronomy and the ways humans relate to the natural world. Her first book as an author, What We See in the Stars: An Illustrated Tour of the Night Sky, came out in Fall 2017. She lives in Minneapolis with her husband, Nick, and their two cats, Jamie and Fiona.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780307464316
ISBN 10	0307464318
Title	The Naturalist
Author	Darrin Lunde
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Broadway Books (A Division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc)
Year published	2017-04-11
Number of pages	352
Prizes	Winner of Theodore Roosevelt Association Book Prize 2017
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.