Under A Wild Sky
In the century and a half since John James Audubon’s death, his name has become synonymous with wildlife conservation and natural history. But few people know what a complicated figure he was––or the dramatic story behind The Birds of America—as told in this “superb introduction to the artist and the man” (New York Times).
Before Audubon, ornithological illustrations depicted scaled-down birds perched in static poses. Wheeling beneath storm-racked skies or ripping flesh from freshly killed prey, Audubon’s life-size birds looked as if they might fly screeching off the page. The wildness in the images matched their maker––a self-taught painter and self-anointed aristocrat, who, with his buckskins and long hair, was both a hardened frontiersman and a cultured man of science.
Tormented by ambiguities surrounding his birth, Audubon reinvented himself ceaselessly. But when he came east at thirty-eight––broke and desperate to find a publisher––he ran into a scientific establishment still wedded to convention and suspicious of the newcomer. It took Audubon fifteen years to prevail in both his project and his vision. How he triumphed and what drove him are the subjects of William Souder’s gripping narrative, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
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Praise and Prizes
“William Souder renders a fascinating portrait not only of Audubon but of the America he knew, a place so lush and fertile it seems almost mythical. But those drawings—foundational American documents—prove it was so, and this book makes new and compelling sense of them and their creator.”
“One feels Audubon’s power, and something deeply, peculiarly American. . . . A superb introduction to the artist and the man.”
“A meticulous biography and a fascinating portrait of a young nation.”
“Deftly weaves together the story of Audubon 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.”
“As richly endowed and densely packed as the forests of Audubon’s day.”
“William Souder superbly captures Audubon in all his infuriating, contradictory, admirable richness. He splendidly evokes the colorful characters that surrounded him, the wild, rough-edged, game-rich American frontier where he found his life’s calling, the gritty streets of Europe and the scientific politics of Philadelphia and London—but at the core of Under a Wild Sky stands Audubon, brought to fascinating, enigmatic life.”