Grinnell: America's Environmental Pioneer and His Restless Drive to Save the West [Hardcover]

George Bird Grinnell, the son of a New York merchant, saw a different future for a nation in the thrall of the Industrial Age. With railroads scarring virgin lands and the formerly vast buffalo herds decimated, the country faced a crossroads: Could it pursue Manifest Destiny without destroying its natural bounty and beauty? The alarm that Grinnell sounded would spark Americas conservation movement. Yet today his name has been forgottenan omission that John Taliaferros commanding biography now sets right with historical care and narrative flair.Winner National Outdoor Book Award (History/Biography) Without a doubt, the United States is a better place because of George Bird Grinnell.... [We] finally have an exhaustively detailed biography of an inexhaustible man who deserves his place in the pantheon of environmental founders.... Grinnells memory lives on in the wild. And with this book, he is given the fresh look that he deserves. An impressive, eminently readable biography of the great conservationist George Bird Grinnell.... Anyone who's ever set foot in a national park and wondered how it came to be will find an important part of the answer in this?expansive?look at an equally expansive life. The best book I read this decade was: In A fine biography of a significant environmental champion. George Bird Grinnell is one of fascinating characters of the nineteenth centurya participant in events both heroic and tragicand so it is good news that we have a full biography. Conservation traces many of its roots to Grinnell, so we need to understand him! George Bird Grinnell, one of the great visionaries in American environmentalism, has long deserved to have his story told. Among our ablest biographers, John Taliaferro has given us a smartly crafted and richly detailed portrait of a sage life that speaks to our often reckless but sometimes responsible ways, past and present. A meticulous, indelible, and exhilarating portrait of George Bird Grinnell, in which Jlc*