The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Douglas Brinkley (Author)

Book Description

Release date: July 28, 2009

Historian Douglas Brinkley draws on never-before-published materials to examine the life and achievements of our "naturalist president." By setting aside more than 230 million acres of wild America for posterity between 1901 and 1909, Theodore Roosevelt made conservation a universal endeavor. This crusade for the American wilderness was perhaps the greatest U.S. presidential initiative between the Civil War and World War I. Tracing the role that nature played in Roosevelt's storied career, Brinkley brilliantly analyzes the influence that the works of John James Audubon and Charles Darwin had on the young man who would become our twenty-sixth president. He also profiles Roosevelt's incredible circle of naturalist friends, including the Catskills poet John Burroughs, Boone and Crockett Club cofounder George Bird Grinnell, and Sierra Club founder John Muir, among many others. He brings to life hilarious anecdotes of wild-pig hunting in Texas and badger saving in Kansas. Even the story of the teddy bear gets its definitive treatment. Destined to become a classic, this extraordinary and timeless biography offers a penetrating and colorful look at Roosevelt's naturalist achievements, a legacy now more important than ever. As we face the problems of global warming, overpopulation, and sustainable land management, this imposing leader's stout resolution to protect our environment is an inspiration and a contemporary call to arms for us all.

--This text refers to the MP3 CD edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best of the Month, August 2009: "The movement for the conversation of wild life and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose, and method." So wrote Theodore Roosevelt, known as the "naturalist President" for his efforts in protecting wildlife and wilderness, merging preservation and patriotism into a quintessential American ideal. The Wilderness Warrior, Douglas Brinkley's massive(ly readable) new biography, intrepidly explores the wilderness of influences (Audubon and Darwin), personal relationships (Muir and Pinchot), and frontier adventures (too many to mention) that shaped Roosevelt's proto-green views. Topping 800 pages (ironically, one wonders how many trees fell for the first printing), The Wilderness Warrior makes an excellent companion to Timothy Egan's The Big Burn and Ken Burns's The National Parks: America's Best Idea. --Jon Foro

From The New Yorker

Theodore Roosevelt spent the day of July 1, 1908, the tenth anniversary of the Battle of San Juan Hill, creating forty-five national forests. In this biographical study of T.R.’s campaign to save hundreds of millions of acres of wilderness, Brinkley writes that “the forestry movement would be forced down his opponents’ throats.” Roosevelt’s intense love for nature was, Brinkley makes clear, a conqueror’s love—triumphal Darwinism—and included a “blood lust” in hunting the wildlife he championed. The baby bear that, in popular myth, T.R. refused to shoot was actually an adult bear that he directed to be dispatched with a knife. Brinkley fully inhabits Roosevelt’s mind, a condition that has its disadvantages—the book, with blow-by-blow accounts of college hiking trips and squabbles between naturalists, does not entirely earn its nine hundred pages, making it harder to see the forests (and the story of how T.R. rescued them) for the trees.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 940 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins; 1 edition (July 28, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060565284
• ISBN-13: 978-0060565282
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 2.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (82 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #321,407 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #53 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( R ) > Roosevelt, Theodore

More About the Author

Dr. Douglas Brinkley is currently a Professor of History at Rice University and a Fellow at the James Baker III Institute of Public Policy. He completed his bachelor's degree at Ohio State University and received his doctorate in U.S. Diplomatic History from Georgetown University in 1989. He then spent a year at the U.S. Naval Academy and Princeton University teaching history. While a professor at Hofstra University, Dr. Brinkley spearheaded the American Odyssey course, in which he took students on numerous cross-country treks where they visited historic sites and met seminal figures in politics and literature. Dr. Brinkley's 1994 book, The Majic Bus: An American Odyssey chronicled his first experience teaching this innovative on-the-road class which became the progenitor to C-SPAN's Yellow School Bus.

Five of Dr. Brinkley's books have been selected as New York Times "Notable Books of the Year": Dean Acheson: The Cold War Years(1992), Driven Patriot: The Life and Times of James Forrestal, with Townsend Hoopes (1992), The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter's Journey Beyond the White House (1998), Wheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company and a Century of Progress (2003), and The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast (2006).

Five of his most recent publications have become New York Times best-sellers: The Reagan Diaries, (2007), The Great Deluge (2006), The Boys of Pointe du Hoc: Ronald Reagan, D-Day and the U.S. Army 2nd Ranger Battalion (2005), Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War (2004) and Voices of Valor: D-Day: June 6, 1944 with Ronald J. Drez (2004). The Great Deluge (2006), was the recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy prize and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book award.

Before coming to Rice, Dr. Brinkley served as Professor of History and Director of the Roosevelt Center at Tulane University in New Orleans. From 1994 until 2005 he was Stephen E. Ambrose Professor of History and Director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies at the University of New Orleans. During his tenure there he wrote two books with the late Professor Ambrose: Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy Since 1938 (1997) and The Mississippi and the Making of a Nation: From the Louisiana Purchase to Today (2002). On the literary front, Dr. Brinkley has edited Jack Kerouac's diaries, Hunter S. Thompson's letters and Theodore Dreiser's travelogue. His work on civil rights includes Rosa Parks (2000) and the forthcoming Portable Civil Rights Reader.

He won the Benjamin Franklin Award for The American Heritage History of the United States (1998) and the Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt Naval History Prize for Driven Patriot (1993). He was awarded the Business Week Book of the Year Award for Wheels for the World and was also named 2004 Humanist of the Year by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. He has received honorary doctorates from Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.

Dr. Brinkley is contributing editor for Vanity Fair, Los Angeles Times Book Review and American Heritage. A frequent contributor to the New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic Monthly, he is also a member of the Theodore Roosevelt Association, the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Century Club. In a recent profile, the Chicago Tribune deemed him "America's new past master."

Forthcoming publications include The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the crusade for America and a biography of Walter Cronkite.

He lives in Austin and Houston, Texas with his wife and three children.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

138 of 147 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A tour de force on Roosevelt the Environmental Activist August 1, 2009

By Enjolras TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I'm sure many of you are wondering whether we really need another biography of Theodore Roosevelt. After all, there has been a spate of other biographies on the man, from Edmund Morris' Theodore Rex to Kathleen Dalton's Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life. In short, the answer is YES, this is an essential TR biography. Even if you have read all of those other books (as I have), Douglas Brinkley's The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America is a vital addition to our understanding of TR as a man, a politician, and an environmental activist.

Brinkley's The Wilderness Warrior argues that Teddy Roosevelt was not simply a politician who cared about nature, but that his life as a naturalist permeated his entire outlook on life and use of political power. He goes further by arguing that TR was a committed preservationist who sought to protect nature forever, not just a "utilitarian" conservationist who sought to protect natural resources for later exploitation - despite his affinity for hunting.

The first part of the book documents TR's fascination with wildlife and the outdoors as a young child. Even by the age of 10, he had established a small "museum" of his favorite wildlife specimens (which he later donated to the Smithsonian and American Museum of Natural History). Brinkley portrays a young TR excitedly studying the radula (mouthparts) of small mollusks - hardly what one would imagine as the hobby of a future president. Brinkley also digs up some less appreciated influences on young TR. For example, he shines a light on Robert B. Roosevelt, TR's "black sheep" uncle who became a prominent advocate for fish conservation in New York and probably played a key role in encouraging TR's activism. Right up until college, Brinkley recalls how TR seemed destined for a career as a biologist. However, at Harvard, he became bored with lab biology and found another avocation - politics.

The next chapters show how TR continued his passion for nature even while pursuing a political career. Some of the stories - such as his trips to the Badlands after his mother and first wife Alice both died - are well known, but Brinkley fills them with rich detail. More interesting are the events that receive scant attention in most TR biographies. Even after spending years immersed in U.S. environmental history, I never realized that TR had founded the very first nationally effective environmental advocacy NGO (the Boone and Crocket Club). Brinkley brings this group to life by recalling the personalities in the group, such as naturalist George Bird Grinnell, and the groups publications. Throughout this, TR wrote acclaimed books about the American West, his hunting exploits, and endangered species. It is fascinating to see TR heatedly debating species classification with the government biologist C. Hart Merriam, while TR was serving as Assistant Secretary of the Navy (and many biologists now agree with TR's position no less!). In short, as Brinkley makes clear, even if he had never become president, TR would have been an important historical figure in raising awareness of the natural heritage of the American West.

However, of course TR was destined to play a much greater role as president. Much of the rest of the book shows how TR used the presidency to advance what Brinkley considers the most ambitious and meaningful conservationist agenda in U.S. history. At the stroke of a pen, TR would designate vast tracts of U.S. wilderness as National Refuges. When deciding to make Pelican Island, Florida, a Federal Bird Reservation, TR simply stated "I So Declare It"! In the end, Brinkley notes that TR not only protected some of our most important natural sites, such as the Grand Canyon, but also pushed for the laws and improvised the tools that would allow future presidents to follow in his footsteps.

One things I really love about this book is that it stays focused on TR the naturalist. With a personality as engaging as Teddy Roosevelt, there is material enough to fill several biographies (not that this book is short - it's over 800 pages!). Fortunately, Brinkley never meanders too far into other aspects of TR's life, which means the book remains fresh. Every page has a new and exciting anecdote that is probably unfamiliar to all but hardcore TR fans. Furthermore, by staying so close to his theme, Brinkley shows just how deeply conservationist philosophies pervaded TR's life. For example, TR fell in love with Darwin's theories of evolution at a young age and later used them to justify his foreign policy exploits. After reading this book, I came away with a renewed appreciation of TR as a politician and a man (could you ever imagine George Bush or Barack Obama "roughing it" out West?).

On the other hand, anybody interested in U.S. political history or environmentalism will find this book a treasure trove. Brinkley provides enough background on TR and U.S. history at the time so readers can follow along. Moreover, he writes well and makes every incident an adventure. The book has everything from hunting tales to political campaigning to battle skirmishes. Rather than feeling like 800 pages, you'll wish Brinkley had added another 400.

In fact, my only criticism of the book is that Brinkley should have kept on writing. I know the poor guy had to finish the book somewhere. The book ends when TR leaves the presidency in 1908, but the adventures didn't stop there. TR took trips to East Africa and the Amazon River in Brazil on hunting and scientific expeditions. Surely these influenced TR's views of nature. Fortunately, Candice Millard's The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey and TR's own African Game Trails: An Account of the African Wanderings of an American Hunter-Natrualist cover these exploits. However, I would have been interested in learning more about TR's 1912 campaign as the Bull Moose candidate from The Wilderness Warrior's conservationist perspective. Hopefully, Brinkley can add some commentary in a revised edition on these episodes and how they influenced TR's views on conservation.

In short, I can't recommend this book enough. It is something rare in biographies of famous politicians - it is both well-written and original. However, don't take my word - check out this brief excerpt from Vanity Fair earlier this summer: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/05/teddy-roosevelt-excerpt200905. In addition, if you like this book, you might also want to read Gifford Pinchot and the Making of Modern Environmentalism (Pioneers of Conservation), about TR's righthand man in the U.S. Forest Service.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Collections of factoids do not a history book make April 22, 2011

By Petersburgh

Format:Paperback

This is a great topic and it could have been a good book, but sadly Douglas Brinkley is simply not up to the challenge. I apologize for this long review, but there is so much wrong with this book that I feel I must do my best to warn others.

Wilderness Warrior is bloated with far too much detail, much of it not terribly relevant. To make matters worse, Brinkley frequently gets these details wrong. It would take a book of its own to present the hundreds of factual errors Brinkley makes. Other critical reviews here have done a good job of providing examples; they're all true, and I could add many more besides. So unfortunately these are not isolated errors, but rather the tip of a very large iceberg. Brinkley is a full professor of history, not an amateur, so he has no excuse for such an extensive pattern of error.

Errors aside, what does this book have to offer the reader? Despite its bulk, really not much. There is almost nothing particularly new here. Really, does anyone who would be motivated to read this book not already know that TR was a great presidential conservationist? Yes, like you I wanted to know more about that aspect of TR, and that's what made me want to read this book. But Brinkley simply collects "facts" like a magpie, without any selectivity. They're all in here, probably every little factoid his research assistants dug up, even if a significant percentage are inaccurate. But that's not the worst of it. That would be Brinkley's inability make meaning out of facts. Or, in plain English, Brinkley just doesn't really know what he's talking about whenever he strays from what other TR biographers have already said about the man.

The writing is consistently dull. When he tries to liven it up, Brinkley often resorts to anachronistic language ("homeboys", "go global") that sticks out painfully and disrupts the flow of the writing, as well as sounding silly. Mostly, this is due Brinkley's lack of stylistic skill, but it is also attributable to the book's lack of an argument or thesis. For example Brinkley passes up the obvious opportunity to explore any of TR's struggles with his many opponents in much detail. They are never more than cardboard cutout villains, rarely even individually named, and in Brinkley's hands they only appear in the book so TR can knock them down with a presidential decree and a resounding "bully!", followed by another lengthy list of sub-species saved. If TR is to be presented to us as a "warrior" for nature protection then it would have been incredibly interesting to know more about his enemies, their motivations, and TR's battles with them. Setting aside the intellectual value of engaging more deeply with this aspect of the TR story, it would also have made the book much less boring than it needed to be by introducing some badly-needed tension to the story. By the way, in contrast, TR's conservation allies, even incredibly minor ones, are profiled in excruciatingly detailed mini-biographies that go on forever.

Another problem is the author's choice to abruptly end the book with the close of TR's presidency. Ten years of the still-youthful TR's conservation activity as an influential ex-president is condensed into a couple of pages. This is quite a failure of imagination in Brinkley's conception of what the book should do. Finally, there is no substantive conclusion telling the reader what Brinkley thinks we should learn from the nearly one thousand pages we have just read. It's as if the author, no longer caring how it ended, simply stopped writing, and 1908 was as good a time as any to end the story.

Once I was finished with it, I was so struck by this book's awfulness that I went in search of published reviews to see how it had been received. To my surprise, newspaper book reviewers loved it and the New York Times even made it a Notable Book of the year. This reveals a shocking lack of discernment on the part of America's journalistic class. The lack of attention from more qualified academic reviewers, however, is telling. I suspect that more they are taking their mother's advice and not saying anything, since they found it hard to say anything nice.

I did, however, find an exception in an excellent piece in the New York Sun by historian Wilfred McCay of the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga. He was critiquing Brinkley's recent book about Hurricane Katrina but also took the opportunity to make some general remarks about Brinkley's output and scholarship which can be applied with perfect accuracy to Wilderness Warrior, and they are well worth quoting here by way of closing:

"[Brinkley's] writings have [these] things in common. First and foremost is their relentless mediocrity. I cannot think of a historian or public intellectual who has managed to make himself so prominent in American public life without having put forward a single memorable idea, a single original analysis, or a single lapidary phrase -- let alone without publishing a book that has had any discernable impact... Second is their sloppiness, partly an inevitable product of the haste in their composition, and partly, one suspects, of a mind that becomes easily bored by careful, close analysis... you would never want to rely on his books as sources of accurate detail... All of this would be forgivable if Mr. Brinkley had written a book that was lively and evocative. But [it] just goes on and on and on, a veritable Mississippi of sludgy, sophomoric, rebarbative prose, with gimmicky human-interest stories, transcriptions of press releases, gratuitous quotations, and potted history. This author may feel the gravity of his subject, but he does not manage to convey it."

24 of 28 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Fact check please! October 26, 2009

By Clifford K. Larsen

Format:Kindle Edition

This book reads like a master's thesis from a third-rate college - cut and paste with little regard for "facts" drawn from secondary sources. To give two examples:
page 62: "It was also exciting that Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln ... had both been on February 22, 1803". Wrong. They were both born on February 12, 1809.
page 135: "The outlaw Jesse James had launched his career as a notorious bank robber in 1876, just over 200 miles down the road in Northfield, Minnesota". Wrong. Jesse James was active as a bank robber in the period 1866-1876 (named as an "outlaw" in 1869) and went into temporary retirement AFTER the ill-fated Northfield robbery.
Frankly, it's hard to trust anything as "fact" in this overly long tome.