Title: The naturalist : Theodore Roosevelt, a lifetime of exploration, and the triumph of American natural history /
Authors: Lunde, Darrin P.
Year: 2016
Subjects: Roosevelt, Theodore,; Roosevelt, Theodore,; Nature conservation United States.; Natural history museums United States.; Naturalists United States Biography; Conservationists United States Biography; Presidents United States Biography; BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY Presidents & Heads of State.; NATURE Animals Wildlife.; Conservationists; Natural history museums; Naturalists; Nature conservation; Presidents; United States
Abstract: "The surprising story of our "naturalist president" Theodore Roosevelt and how his lifelong passion for the natural world set the stage for America's wildlife conservation movement. No United States president is more popularly associated with nature and wildlife than 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 located Roosevelt in the proud tradition of museum naturalism. From his earliest days, Roosevelt actively modeled himself on the men who pioneered a key branch of biology through the collection of animal specimens and by developing a taxonomy of the natural world. The influence they would have on Roosevelt shaped not only his audacious personality but his 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 expedition journals and pulling from his own experience as a leading figure in today's museum naturalism, Lunde constructs a thoughtfully researched, singularly insightful history that tracks Roosevelt's maturation from exuberant boyhood hunter to vital champion of serious scientific inquiry"--
Contents: Introduction -- Part I. The Museum Naturalist. Chapter 1. The Seal on Broadway ; Chapter 2. Collections Make Museums ; Chapter 3. The Mind but Not the Body ; Chapter 4. Full-Bore Birder ; Chapter 5. Egypt, Land of My Dreams ; Chapter 6. Alone at Harvard -- Part II. All Hunters Should Be Nature Lovers. Chapter 7. Roosevelt Rebels ; Chapter 8. Hell with the Fires Out ; Chapter 9. Change in the West ; Chapter 10. Winchester Naturalist ; Chapter 11. Real Men and Mousers ; Chapter 12. A Tiffany Knife to the Heart ; Chapter 13. Who's a Nature Faker? -- Part III. Roosevelt's New Naturalism. Chapter 14. I Am Going to Africa ; Chapter 15. A Railroad Through the Pleistocene ; Chapter 16. Bwana Tumbo - Mr. Big Belly ; Chapter 17. Deep in Prehistoric Thought ; Chapter 18. Bent on Mischief ; Chapter 19. Hunters and Naturalists ; Epilogue. The End of the Game -- Acknowledgments -- Sources and Notes -- Bibliography -- Photography Credits -- Index.