A captivating new 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.
