cover image The Naturalist: Theodore Roosevelt, a Lifetime of Exploration, and the Triumph of American Natural History

The Naturalist: Theodore Roosevelt, a Lifetime of Exploration, and the Triumph of American Natural History

Darrin Lunde. Crown, $28 (320p) ISBN 978-0-307-46430-9

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. [em]Agent: Elaine Markson, Elaine Markson Literary Agency. (Apr.) [/em]