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| John James Audubon: The Making of an American | 
| Author: Richard Rhodes
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $16.00
Buy Used: $3.29
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Avg. Customer Rating:  20 reviews
Sales Rank: 223473
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 528
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.3 x 1.2
ISBN: 037571393X
Dewey Decimal Number: 598.092
EAN: 9780375713934
ASIN: 037571393X
Publication Date: April 11, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
A Remarkable Journey June 11, 2005
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
Not only is this a wonderful biography, but it is a compelling look at America in the 1800s. Readers will appreciate Rhodes's rich detail in the story of the movement of men and women going west to create their fortunes and the inevitable clash with Native Americans, lush forests, and endemic animal species.
Birders will love the tales of Audubon's encounters with Ivory-Billed Woodpeckers, Chimney Swifts, Passenger Pigeons, and more.
If you find courage and perseverance inspiring, this biography will not disappoint.
Great book by a talented writer. June 3, 2005
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Richard Rhodes wrote one of my favorite books of all time, "The making of the atomic bomb." He has a remarkable way with words and knows how to effortlessly convey information. From the opening sentence on this book has everything--fascinating story, new information, highly readable. Something unspoken in the book is haunting, too: how much we have destroyed in the last 200 years. Getting in my car and driving down the road past miles of weedy second growth and mowed fields I felt how much we had lost, and what a sterile world we have now. None of this is ever mentioned by Rhodes of course.
An illuminating look at a man and his times. February 22, 2005
21 out of 21 found this review helpful
This fantastic book has something for everyone. Rhodes does an excellent job of breathing life into Audubon the man without losing touch of Audubon the artist or Audubon the scientist. In the process, he paints a vivid portrait of America of the early 19th century. This is an outstanding work of biography, naturalism, and history wrapped up in one great book.
Born to a French planter on what is present day Haiti and raised in France, Audubon came to America at a young age. As he endures a few business failures, Audubon turns back to his first loves: birds and painting. In an age prior to photography, he goes to great lengths to capture the true likeness of birds on paper with the ultimate goal of creating a complete (as possible) catalog of American birds. Some might be shocked by his methods. Few birders today would encourage the hunting of birds as a means of appreciating their beauty. But, we must keep in mind the times he came from and that without this method much of our knowledge of birds would be limited. One thing I truly enjoyed about this biography was the view as Audubon as a man who not only painted birds but knew about them in minute detail because he studies them in the field. It brims over with adventure as Audubon goes on many of his missions to gather more birds. Further, Rhodes does not make the mistake of many a biographer: thoroughly examining their subject while presenting one-dimensional portraits of the other folks in the subject' life. Numerous people, including friends and relatives, are depicted in all their dimensions and shed further light on Audubon and his times. Of particular note is Audubon's wife Lucy, without whom it is doubtful that he could have accomplished all he did.
Included in the book are beautiful reproductions of Audubon's art, which most of us have seen. However, as we read of the conditions under which these masterpieces were painted we gain a new respect for these works of art. After reading this book, you will be inspired to grab your binoculars (which JJA didn't have) and go birding. Highly recommended. I think all readers can find something to like in this superb book.
An Unexpected Pleasure February 6, 2005
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
Quite frankly I found this book rather inspirational. In addition to being a great artist, woodsman, and romantic, Audubon possessed the personal qualities of many great American entrepreneurs. Rhodes paints a picture of a man who blazed a trail for the conservation movement, travel and art industries we know today. Perhaps now Audubon will get the broader recognition he justly deserves as a truly great American pioneer, hopefully inspiring more than just the birdwatchers of America.
 Rich but poorly focused biography, short on natural history January 11, 2005
31 out of 37 found this review helpful
When I saw that Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Rhodes had written a new biography of John James Audubon, I rushed to acquire it, knowing that Rhodes had a solid reputation as a good writer and a thorough historian. While this latest book by Rhodes is certainly rich in biographical detail and presents a full picture of its subject, it is somewhat disappointing insofar as it gives relatively limited attention to what made Audubon famous-his interest and talent in natural history, particularly birds.
Rhodes describes the crucial events in Audubon's life very thoroughly, digging into primary documents quite ably and portraying his subject in a way that is bound to leave any reader with a full understanding of Audubon the man and his relationship with the key players in his life, including his long-suffering wife and two talented sons. But he devotes far more attention to the earliest part of Audubon's life than he does to the artist's final years. This is especially frustrating because Audubon's early life was beset with failures in business ventures that are really not that interesting or important to understanding the man, and the final years of his life included a pioneering trip up the Missouri River to the Yellowstone country, collecting mammals for his last published work.
The most striking weakness of the book is Rhodes's limited knowledge of birds. It is perhaps because of this deficit in the author's background that he devotes relatively little attention to the avian species which Audubon discovered and was the first to paint. While Rhodes states that he plans to include the modern names of bird species in parentheses after the archaic names from Audubon's time for those species where this is warranted, he does so inconsistently. He also shows little appreciation for the differing distribution of birds in Audubon's time-missing the significance, for example, of white pelicans as common birds on the Ohio River, which has not been the case for a century and more. He also never points out that a number of Audubon's contemporaries gave their surnames to a number of species-including Bachman, Bonaparte, Say, Swainson, and Traill. Having had the manuscript of the book reviewed by one or more ornithologists would have helped overcome many of these deficits.
Having pointed out this weakness, it is only fair for me to note that Rhodes does show an unusual appreciation for Audubon's artistry and artistic technique which is illuminating for the reader. The book would have benefited from a sharper editing, however, to reduce its length, since it is rather laborious reading. It would also have caught some glaring errors--such as stating that on the trip to Yellowstone, Audubon travelled from Baltimore to Cumberland, KY, then to Wheeling, WV, and Louisville. (Obviously, he went from Baltimore to Cumberland, MD, then to Wheeling.)
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Wildlife, nature and the Environment
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