The Wilderness Warrior
The days are getting longer, but slowly, and there are still plenty of dark, rainy evenings this winter for reading.
If, as a member of the Institute community, you wish to broaden and deepen your knowledge of conservation history – We are into “conserving and restoring northwest environments through education” are we not? – then I have the perfect read for you. As a bonus, this one book will take you through to spring. It is Douglas Brinkley’s The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America (Harper, 2009, 940 pages).
While there are multitudes of books about Theodore Roosevelt, no one has explained and dissected how natural history and conservation were central to his life and work with the thoroughness and insight Brinkley brings to the task. He describes the young Roosevelt’s fascination with the natural world, the influences on his interests of his eccentric Uncle Rob, the centrality of Darwin’s theorizing upon his thinking, and how his fascination with the American West formed many of his ideas about land in general and public land in particular.
