From New York Times bestselling historian Douglas Brinkley comes a sweeping historical narrative and eye-opening look at the pioneering environmental policies of President Theodore Roosevelt, avid bird-watcher, naturalist, and the founding father of America's conservation movement – now approaching its 100th anniversary.
Douglas Brinkley is a professor of history at Rice University, CBS News Historian, and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. The Chicago Tribune has dubbed him "America's new past master." Seven of his books have been selected as New York Times Notable Books of the Year. Cronkite won the Sperber Prize for Best Book in Journalism and was a Washington Post Notable Book of the Year 2012. The Great Deluge won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. He lives in Texas with his wife and three children. Brinkley has been awarded honorary doctorates from Trinity College (Connecticut), University of Maine, Hofstra University, and Allegheny College, among many others.
"[...] I’ve long admired Theodore Roosevelt. Now, after reading The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America, he’s my hero. It is no exaggeration that America would be very different place – a much poorer one – without him. Brinkley’s biography is fascinating reading, all the more so if you share Roosevelt’s love of birds or the National Parks. "Roosevelt was a pro-forest, pro-buffalo, cougar-infatuated, socialistic land conservationist who had been trained at Harvard as a Darwinian-Huxleyite zoologist and now believed that the moral implications of On the Origin of Species needed to be embraced by public policy. The GOP was in trouble." Oh, that it were again."
– Grant McCreary (26-02-2015), read the full review at The Birder's Library
"What an absolutely perfect match between subject and writer. This is a major contribution to our understanding not only of Roosevelt but of the historic movement to save our wilderness."
– Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of Team of Rivals
"To understand America, you need to appreciate Teddy Roosevelt. Doug Brinkley brilliantly uses the lens of Roosevelt's love of nature to show why he is so influential, fascinating, and relevant to our own times. This wonderful book is as vibrant as he was."
– Walter Isaacson, author of Einstein
"Douglas Brinkley has brought us an important, deeply researched, compellingly readable and inspiring story. Exactly a century after his Presidency, there could not be a better time to revisit and celebrate T.R.'s unfinished environmental legacy."
– Michael Beschloss, author of Presidential Courage
"No president has been a greater champion of our natural world – especially its wildlife – than Theodore Roosevelt. Now that extraordinary force of nature has his own champion in Douglas Brinkley's stirring account of the man who turned our attention to conservation and the many glories of our American landscape."
– Ken Burns, co-author of The War
"A vast, inspiring, and enormously entertaining book."
– New York Times Book Review