Birds were "the objects of my greatest delight," wrote John James Audubon (1785–1851), founder of modern ornithology and one of the world's greatest bird painters. His masterpiece, The Birds of America depicts almost five hundred North American bird species, each image—lifelike and life size—rendered in vibrant color. Audubon was also an explorer, a woodsman, a hunter, an entertaining and prolific writer, and an energetic self-promoter.

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Describes the expeditions led by Roy Chapman Andrews for New York's American Museum of Natural History to the Gobi Desert in Mongolia in an effort to uncover dinosaur fossils.

A biography of John Muir, early proponent of wilderness preservation and founder of the Sierra Club.

Often called the mother of the modern environmental movement, Rachel Carson rocked the world in 1962 with her book Silent Spring, which warned the American public of the impact of pesticides on the environment and unleashed an extraordinary national debate about science and safety. At the center of that firestorm stood Ms. Carson, a strong, intensely private woman who balanced her love of the natural world and passion for writing with personal strife....

Rachel Carson, founder of the modern environmental movement, began work on her seminal book Silent Spring in the late 1950s, when a dizzying array of synthetic pesticides had come into use. Leading this chemical onslaught was the insecticide DDT. Effective against crop pests as well as insects that transmitted human diseases such as typhus and malaria, DDT had at first appeared safe. But as its use expanded, alarming reports surfaced of collateral...

"A biography of Theodore Roosevelt focusing on his career as a naturalist, his role as a pioneer for wilderness engagement, and an early advocate for museum building"-- "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...

"Thoreau is one of those authors that readers think they know, even if they don't. He's the solitary curmudgeon with the shack out in the woods, the mystic worshipping solemnly in the quiet church of nature. He's our national Natural Man, the prophet of environmentalism. But here Robert Sullivan--who himself has been called an 'urban Thoreau' (New York Times Book Review) --presents the Thoreau you don't know: the activist, the organizer, the gregarious...

"In June of 1889 in San Francisco, John Muir-iconic environmentalist, writer, and philosopher-meets face-to-face for the first time with his longtime editor Robert Underwood Johnson, an elegant and influential figure at The Century magazine. Before long, the pair, opposites in many ways, decide to venture to Yosemite Valley, the magnificent site where twenty years earlier, Muir experienced a personal and spiritual awakening that would set the course...