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Searching... Hattiesburg Library | 973.911092 BRINKLEY | Book | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
"Douglas Brinkley brings to this magnificent story of Theodore Roosevelt's crusade on behalf of America's national parks the same qualities that made TR so fascinating a figure--an astonishing range of knowledge, a superb narrative skill, a wonderfully vivid writing style and an inexhaustible energy."
--Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of Team of Rivals
A vast, inspiring, and enormously entertaining book."
-- New York Times Book Review
From New York Times bestselling historian Douglas Brinkley comes a sweeping historical narrative and eye-opening look at the pioneering environmental policies of President Theodore Roosevelt, avid bird-watcher, naturalist, and the founding father of America's conservation movement--now approaching its 100th anniversary.
Author Notes
Douglas Brinkley was born in Atlanta, Georgia on December 14, 1960. He received a B.A. from Ohio State University in 1982 and a Ph.D. from Georgetown University in 1989. He was a professor at Tulane University, Princeton University, the U.S. Naval Academy, Hofstra University, and the University of New Orleans. In 2007, he became a professor at Rice University and the James Baker Institute for Public Policy. He is a commentator for CBS News and a contributing editor to the magazine Vanity Fair.
His first book, Jean Monnet: The Path to European Unity, was published in 1992. His other works include Dean Acheson: The Cold War Years, The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter's Journey Beyond the White House, Wheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company, and a Century of Progress, The Boys of Pointe du Hoc: Ronald Reagan, D-Day, and the U.S. Army 2nd Ranger Battalion, The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America, Cronkite, and Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America. He also wrote three books with historian Stephen E. Ambrose: The Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy Since 1938, Witness to History, and The Mississippi and the Making of a Nation: From the Louisiana Purchase to Today. He has won several awards including the Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt Naval History Prize for Driven Patriot and the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award for The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Award-winning author Brinkley (The Great Deluge, Gerald Ford) turns a bright light on a facet of Roosevelt's nine-year presidency that was arguably his greatest contribution to the country: his "visionary" take on "our national wilderness heritage" that led him to preserve 234 million acres of land for posterity (that's one out of ten acres). Using the power of the presidency, he declared Florida's Pelican Island a Federal Bird Reservation, created 37 new national forests (including 17 million acres of pristine Alaska) and saved the Grand Canyon from mining outfits. A larger-than-life figure, almost manic in his exuberance and known for his battlefield valor in the Spanish American War, it is less well-known that Roosevelt was a serious naturalist and author, who trained in Darwinian biology at Harvard. The "heart and soul of the burgeoning conservation movement," Roosevelt combined intelligence, enthusiasm and hunting-buddy charm to influence congress as well as the "backwoods types" he met on hunting trips out West. Brinkley's full, rounded warts-and-all portrait of Roosevelt is sure to interest history buffs and environmentalists. (July) Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* How to reconcile Teddy Roosevelt, the big-game hunter, with President Roosevelt, the revolutionary environmentalist? Gifted and versatile historian Brinkley foregrounds Roosevelt's profound passion for nature in a biography as expansive and radiant as the glorious landscapes Roosevelt zealously preserved. The length of this engrossing portrait indicates the primacy of Roosevelt's conservation efforts, yet Brinkley is the first to explicate the full story, and just in time. As environmental concerns intensify, Roosevelt's battles to preserve forests, grasslands, mountains, and the habitats of birds, fish, and diverse animal species, so lucidly chronicled here, provide crucial guidance. Brinkley writes with particular empathy about how precocious, asthmatic Roosevelt discovered the healing powers of nature, and trained himself to become an irrepressible naturalist, and covers with fluent insights Roosevelt's extensive travels, sparkling writing, and professionalization of forestry and wildlife protection. A poetic warrior on a great wildlife crusade who believed that conservation efforts are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose, and method, Roosevelt created national forests (150), bird reserves (51), and parks and monuments (24), preserving such wonders as the Grand Canyon. Teddy Roosevelt's mighty legacy consists of the places he saved and the ecological vision he shared.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2009 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Brinkley (history, Rice Univ.; The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast) details President Roosevelt's status as an American folk hero, his battles with political and corporate dissenters, and the friends and enemies he made in his fight to preserve the U.S. wilderness through the creation of national parks and monuments, bird and game reservations, and national forests. Brinkley heaps praise on Roosevelt for his preservation of over 230 million acres of wilderness, detailing Roosevelt's reading, his naturalist hobbies, and the people he drew around him who crucially worked to save American wilderness areas. Verdict While this very readable biography showcases an impressive amount of research, at over 900 pages, the pace is slowed down by simply too much information about the scientists, politicians, and explorers Roosevelt knew and by the extravagant descriptions of wildlife. Best suited for academics, armchair historians, or the most avid of biography enthusiasts. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 11/15/08.]-Crystal Goldman, San Jose St. Univ. Lib., CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.