John James Audubon

John Burroughs, the great American nature writer who walked the same forests and streams as his subject, brings Audubon to vivid life in this early twentieth-century biography. Burroughs paints Audubon not merely as an artist but as a singular force of nature himself: a man of mixed French-Haitian heritage who taught himself to see birds as no one before him had, stalking the swamps and prairies of a young America with a gun in one hand and a brush in the other. The book traces Audubon’s remarkable journey from his boyhood in Louisiana through his legendary perambulations across the continent, building toward his monumental Birds of America, the double-elephant folio that redefined how Americans would see their winged neighbors. Burroughs positions Audubon against his predecessor Alexander Wilson, but ultimately reveals a figure whose passion transcended rivalry. The biography also gives due honor to Lucy Bakewell Audubon, whose steadfast financial support and management made her husband’s impossible dream possible. Written with Burroughs’ characteristic grace and reverence for the natural world, this is both a portrait of an artist and a meditation on what it means to be devoted to the living world.