Under a Wild Sky
John James Audubon and the Making of The Birds of America
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4.6 • 10 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
In this Pulitzer Prize–finalist biography, the author of Mad at the World examines the little-known life of the man behind the well-known bird survey.
John James Audubon is renowned for his masterpiece of natural history and art, The Birds of America, the first nearly comprehensive survey of the continent’s birdlife. And yet few people understand, and many assume incorrectly, what sort of man he was. How did the illegitimate son of a French sea captain living in Haiti, who lied both about his parentage and his training, rise to become one of the greatest natural historians ever and the greatest name in ornithology? In Under a Wild Sky this Pulitzer Prize finalist, William Souder reveals that Audubon did not only compose the most famous depictions of birds the world has ever seen, but he also composed a brilliant mythology of self. In this dazzling work of biography, Souder charts the life of a driven man who, despite all odds, became the historical figure we know today.
“A meticulous biography and a fascinating portrait of a young nation.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“As richly endowed and densely packed as the forests of Audubon’s day.”—Minneapolis Star-Tribune
“Deftly weaves together the story of the self-taught artist and naturalist…with the development of scientific inquiry in the early years of the republic and the lives of ordinary Americans as the new nation spilled westward over the mountains from the Eastern seaboard.”—Los Angeles Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Renowned for his knowledge of the American wilderness, John James Audubon (1785 1851) was equally adept at the quintessential American activity of self-invention. Arriving in New York City in 1803, the 18-year-old native of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) and illegitimate son of a French sea captain passed himself off as the Louisiana-born scion of a French admiral and claimed to have studied painting with the European master Jacques-Louis David. Audubon (even the name was false) came to the United States to manage a small estate his father co-owned near Philadelphia. Unsuccessful, he eventually tried his hand as a shopkeeper and a mill owner, but failed there, too. His passion for hunting and for making life-size, realistically posed paintings of the animals he shot led to the creation of his magnum opus, Birds of America, now one of the most admired works of American art. But this monumental venture was fraught with difficulties that sometimes brought the artist near the brink of despair. Audubon's work was initially scorned in the U.S.; he had to travel through Britain and France to arouse enough interest to fund the project. Even after its completion and its enthusiastic reception in Europe and the U.S., the work left the naturalist with only a modest income for a lifetime of effort. Souder (A Plague of Frogs) presents Audubon as a complex individual: a loving but distracted husband; a driven artist often plagued by doubts; a scrupulous observer of nature who thought nothing of fabricating some of his written material for dramatic effect. Sympathetic yet balanced, this account shows how much Audubon was shaped by the deep paradoxes of the time and place in which he lived. B&w illus. not seen by PW. Forecasts: This volume will compete with the recently published and wonderfully illustrated Audubon's Elephant by Duff Hart-Davis. However, Under a Wild Sky gives a fuller account of Audubon's life and more context, and therefore the two will more than likely complement each other.
