Overview

Before Rachel Carson, there was George Bird Grinnell--the man whose prophetic vision did nothing less than launch American conservation. George Bird Grinnell, the son of a New York merchant, saw a different future for a nation in the thrall of the Industrial Age. With railroads scarring virgin lands and the formerly vast buffalo herds decimated, the country faced a crossroads: Could it pursue Manifest Destiny without destroying its natural bounty and beauty? The alarm that Grinnell sounded would spark America's conservation movement. Yet today his name has been forgotten--an omission that John Taliaferro's commanding biography now sets right with historical care and narrative flair. Drawing on forty thousand pages of Grinnell's correspondence and dozens of his diaries, Taliaferro reveals a man whose deeds and high-mindedness earned him a lustrous peerage, from presidents to chiefs, Audubon to Aldo Leopold, John Muir to Gifford Pinchot, Edward S. Curtis to Edward H. Harriman. Throughout his long life, Grinnell was bound by family and sustained by intimate friendships, toggling between the East and the West. As Taliaferro's enthralling portrait demonstrates, it was this tension that wound Grinnell's nearly inexhaustible spring and honed his vision--a vision that still guides the imperiled future of our national treasures.

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9781665126540

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Reviews

An impressive, eminently readable biography...Anyone who's ever set foot in a national park and wondered how it came to be will find an important part of the answer in this expansive look at an equally expansive life. -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) Taliaferro seeks to restore [Grinnell] to his rightful place among the giants of the early conservation movement in the United States...His life and work offer valuable lessons. -- Wall Street Journal Without a doubt, the United States is a better place because of George Bird Grinnell...Grinnell's memory lives on in the wild. And with this book, he is given the fresh look that he deserves. -- New York Times Book Review

Author Information

Joe Barrett, an actor and Audie Award and Earphones Award-winning narrator, has appeared both on and off Broadway as well as in hundreds of radio and television commercials. John Taliaferro is a graduate of Harvard College, a former senior editor at Newsweek, and the author of several books, including All the Great Prizes, winner of the Douglas Dillon Award. He lives in Texas and Montana.

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