Summary
The surprising story of intrepid naturalist Theodore Roosevelt and how his lifelong passion for the natural world set the stage for America's wildlife conservation movement.
Perhaps no American president is more associated with nature and wildlife than Theodore Roosevelt, a prodigious hunter and adventurer and an ardent conservationist. We think of Roosevelt as an original, yet in The Naturalist , Darrin Lunde shows how from his earliest days Roosevelt actively modeled himself in the proud tradition of museum naturalists-the men who pioneered a key branch of American biology through their desire to collect animal specimens and develop a taxonomy of the natural world. The influence these men would have on Roosevelt would shape not just his personality but his career, informing his work as a politician and statesman and ultimately affecting generations of Americans' relationship to this country's wilderness. Pulling from vast source material, including Roosevelt's diaries, expedition journals, and new findings from the archives of the Smithsonian, Lunde constructs a brilliantly researched, singularly insightful history that reveals the roots of Roosevelt's enduring naturalist legacy through the group little-known men whose work and lives defined his own.
Author Notes
DARRIN LUNDE is a supervisor in the Division of Mammals at the Smithsonian Museum. Previously he worked at the American Museum and the National Museum of Natural History, and has led active fieldwork throughout the world. Lunde has named more than a dozen new species of mammals and shed light on hundreds of others. He lives in Washington, DC.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Lunde, a supervisory museum specialist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, sheds light on Teddy Roosevelt's interests in the natural world and his contributions to the environmental movement in this mix of biography and examination of the field of natural history preservation. Roosevelt's interests in the natural world were evident from childhood. As a boy growing up in New York City, he collected "as many specimens as possible," encouraging his parents to do the same when they traveled without him. By the time Roosevelt was a teenager, he had become a "full-bore birder." At Harvard he took classes on anatomy, vertebrate physiology, and botany, hoping to emulate heroes John James Audubon and Spencer Fullerton Baird. As an adult, Roosevelt studied animals "by shooting them, stuffing them, and preserving them in natural-history museums." According to Lunde, Roosevelt's attraction to big-game hunting in Africa satisfied both his yearning for outdoor adventure and his intellectual curiosity. Lunde covers Roosevelt's environmental activism and his accomplishments in political office, most notably his lobbying for the establishment of Yellowstone National Park, and impressively narrates how Roosevelt was able to pursue his passions during a contentious political career. Agent: Elaine Markson, Elaine Markson Literary Agency. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Teddy Roosevelt: not just hunter, but also gatherer. Young Theodore took inspiration from the yarns of a "novelist and adventurer" named Capt. Thomas Mayne Reid, who blended hunting, natural history, and exploration into stories guaranteed to captivate a frail and bookish lad. It was under Reid's spell, writes Smithsonian Institution mammalogist and curator Lunde, that Teddy began his own natural history collection, starting off with a much-prized seal skull (the rest of the body, we learn, was too decayed to keep) and building from there. At about the same time, he was privy to planning sessions held in his family home for what would become the American Museum of Natural History. Lunde writes that the well-connected young man could easily have become a staff curator, but, inspired by his reading and research and his father's exhortations, he headed for the wild. In this pursuit, he mirrored many other naturalists who went into the field with notebook in one hand and rifle in the other. If much of Lunde's account is a straightforward biography of Roosevelt in scientific mode, a distinct subtext is a kind of nostalgia for the natural history of old and for the "intrepid museum naturalist" whose era "may very well be coming to an end." The author turns up some interesting tidbits on the future president's expeditions, including a lion-hunting trip to Africa helped along by guides in ways that recent critics of a certain Minnesota dentist may recognize; it is useful to learn from Lunde that Roosevelt also had plenty of critics in his own time who decried his apparent bloodlust. More useful still is Lunde's portrait of Roosevelt as a kind of working amateur scientist in communication with professionals and other amateurs to build scientific institutions and, indeed, field science itself. Though a footnote to broader studies of Roosevelt, this book offers well-considered interpretations of "the brainy naturalist and muscular adventurer." Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Scores of books already have written about Theodore Roosevelt's life and legacy as the 26th U.S. president, but until now none have been written focusing on his role as a respected museum naturalist. Drawing on his background as a renowned Smithsonian-based museum naturalist himself, Lunde outlines the particulars of this risky and unusual profession involving killing and preserving wildlife before launching into a detailed account of Roosevelt's lifelong passion for specimen collecting. As a sickly child confined to his Manhattan brownstone, Roosevelt discovered consolation in books about intrepid explorers and quickly realized that, when he couldn't visit wilderness areas, he could bring nature to him by snaring insects and small animals. Later, after overcoming his illness with strenuous exercise, through multiple hunting expeditions before and after the White House, Roosevelt never lost his ardor for gathering and studying and sending animal skins and carcasses off to museums. While animal lovers may find the emphasis here on killing them somewhat distasteful, both natural history and Roosevelt buffs will welcome this absorbing addition to Teddy Roosevelt lore.--Hays, Carl Copyright 2016 Booklist
Choice Review
Much has been written about Theodore Roosevelt, including his enthusiasm for hunting and his many accomplishments in the field of conservation. Lunde (supervisory museum specialist, Division of Mammals, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History) chronicles and analyzes Roosevelt's lifelong love of the outdoors, drawing heavily on his subject's journals and letters as only a biographer personally familiar with expeditions to wild places and scientific collecting could effectively do. This work is also an account of the development of natural history museums and the field of conservation in the US, detailing the significant contributions of Roosevelt and those of several others. Lunde artfully explains the relationships among hunters, museum collectors, and naturalists--roles Roosevelt filled throughout his life. These roles came together in his post-presidency safari and the Smithsonian African Expedition. In a final, provocative chapter, Lunde ponders the role of the museum naturalist in contemporary society along with the evolution of Roosevelt's views of his own naturalism during his lifetime. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers. --David A. Lovejoy, Westfield State University
Library Journal Review
Lunde (collection manager, Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History) uses diaries and expedition journals as well as his own fieldwork experience to present an empathetic portrait of Theodore Roosevelt as a hunter, collector, nature analyst, and conservationist. Differing from Michael Canfield's Theodore Roosevelt in the Field, which relates how adventuring influenced Roosevelt, Lunde's book stresses how the former president followed in the paths of previous and contemporary naturalists to contribute to the development of the scientific study of birds and mammals. Benefiting from pioneers such as Charles Willson Peale and Spencer Fullerton Baird, Roosevelt consulted and often worked with naturalists including George Bird Grinnell, John Burroughs, and William Temple Hornaday. Lunde describes Roosevelt's faunal studies from the age of eight through the conclusion of his Smithsonian African Expedition (1909-10), more as a specimen gatherer than a sport hunter. (Those interested in his subsequent trip to Brazil should consult Candice Millard's The River of Doubt.) America's rapid urbanization fostered a cultural reaction, in which Roosevelt participated, with a retreat to nature and ultimately society's embrace of environmentalism. VERDICT Colloquially and anecdotally written, sometimes graphically detailing the pursuit and skinning of game, this book is accessible to the lay reader and authenticated for the historian.-Frederick J. Augustyn Jr., Lib. of Congress, Washington, DC © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.