Although Glynis Ridley’s The Discovery of Jeanne Baret; A Story of Science, the High Seas, and the First Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe was originally released by Random House in its original clothbound edition back in December of 2010, it escaped our attention at the time. Fortunately, the recent release of the paperback edition by that publishing house’s Broadway Books sub-imprint did not; thus we shall have the opportunity to discover how the life, travels, and discoveries of this too-little known early botanist influenced the history of both botany as well as navigation.

If only the eleventh chapter of Elizabeth J. Rosenthal’s Birdwatcher: The Life of Roger Tory Peterson was the entirety of the book, it would still be well worth the cover price; for it is in this chapter, titled “DDT, the Osprey, and the Old Lyme Offspring,” that Rosenthal recounts in exquisite detail what is all too often neglected or underplayed when the life story of Peterson is told. Fortunately, Rosenthal has chosen a somewhat unusual style for her biography of Peterson; one more thematic than strictly chronologic and from this is able to draw more focused attention to threads that spanned years and even decades throughout his life.

In truth, the recollection of the life of a person of so many great accomplishments as Peterson is by no means an easy task. Known throughout the world and elevated to eponymous stature by naturalists both professional as well as amateur, through the application of his keen mind and gifted artistic hand to the very structure of the field guide itself he revolutionized the way in which not only birds but virtually all the flora and fauna could be identified in the field. Since the original publication of A Field Guide to the Birds in 1934, through regional division and in subsequent editions, the work has to this day never been out of print. It was the model for dozens of other titles, all following the Peterson Method. When a budding naturalist, be they bird watcher, rock hound, or butterfly collector, acquires a first field guide, the odds are it will carry the Peterson name.

For most, such an accomplishment in and of itself would more than serve to stand as a monument to a life’s work. As Rosenthal clearly depicts in Birdwatcher, Peterson was not content “only” to be the originator of the modern field guide and by it the person responsible for leading untold millions into the study of the natural world. He was also a dedicated conservationist, a pioneer in the modern environmental movement, a masterful photographer, an inspired teacher, and a tireless evangelist for the personal experience of nature by all.

Yet it was Peterson’s involvement in the tragic story of chlorinated hydrocarbon insecticides, known far more widely by the name of one specific form, Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane – DDT – that must never be forgotten, and in Birdwatcher is not, when the name of Peterson is mentioned. From his original, “innocent” assignment by the U.S. Army as a monitor in early experiments with the chemical through his testimony before the Ribicoff Senate subcommittee on pesticides just days after the untimely death of Rachel Carson, and onward to the eventual prohibition of the chemicals in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s, Peterson was there. He was one of the few, like Carson, who suspected early on that something detrimental was happening from the indiscriminate use of these chemicals, and who worked tirelessly to establish the scientific evidence to bring about their prohibition.

Thus through Birdwatcher, the reader comes to understand that not only did Peterson provide the world with the books by which to understand nature, he was also integral in the continuing struggle to ensure that successive generations would be able to live in a world where there was still nature left to understand. As we are just past the 100th anniversary of the birth of the “Great Man,” it is indeed fitting that his life’s work be remembered in its many-faceted brilliance; Birdwatcher plays its part well in paying to his legacy the respect it deserves.

Title: Birdwatcher: The Life of Roger Tory Peterson

Author: Elizabeth J. Rosenthal

Format: hardcover: 437 pages

Publisher: Lyons Press

Publication Date: May, 2008 (a trade paperback edition is expected to be published in March, 2010)

ISBN10: 1-59921-294-3

ISBN: 978-1-59921-294-4

This review was written for and first appeared in Bird Watcher’s Digest. In accordance with Federal Trade Commission 16 CFR Part 255, it is disclosed that the copy of the book read in order to produce it was provided gratis to the reviewer by the editorial staff of that magazine.

The search for the solution to what Sir John Herschel famously called the “mystery of mysteries” – how new species come to exist – has brought a myriad of remarkable creatures to the attention of science. From Deinonychus to Darwin’s Galapagos finches, every discovery has added another clue to the assembled body of knowledge that may someday yield the solution. Yet after reading Sean B. Carroll’s Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species, the reader is left with another tantalizing question to ponder in addition to Herschel’s mystery; that question being which are really the more remarkable – the creatures that have been discovered in the one-hundred-fifty year old quest for the mystery’s answer or the “creatures” (meant rhetorically and with the greatest possible respect, of course) who made the discoveries.

Beginning with Alexander von Humboldt, the last of the great polymath naturalists and the direct intellectual predecessor not only to Charles Darwin, but Alfred Russell Wallace, Henry Walter Bates, and countless others as well, Dr. Carroll, Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics, and an Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of Wisconsin, chronicles the lives, quests, and accomplishments of some of the past two century’s most notable contributors to the many fields that comprise the study of evolutionary development – and what a series of chronicles they are. From the aforementioned triumvirate of Victorian naturalists, who assembled the initial evidence to prove the case that life did not begin in the manner that was then widely believed nor were its forms static in testimony to all things being created perfect, to Linus Pauling, a man not commonly thought of as a researcher into evolution yet whose discoveries at the molecular level of life helped to establish the idea of using a “molecular clock” to redraw and then recalculate the time frame between the branchings on the hominid evolutionary tree.

However while not diminishing Darwin and the other publicly well-known “heavyweights” whose adventures and discoveries are retold in Remarkable Creatures, it is Professor Carroll’s recounting of the lives and works of those who are not so well known outside their respective fields, or who at least may not be as familiar to the wider reading public, that really makes the book a gem for all with an interest in natural history. Charles Walcott for example, whose discovery of the Burgess Shale and subsequent contribution to the unraveling of the mystery of the Cambrian Explosion, is one such individual so profiled. Confidant to U.S. presidents and head of both the U.S. Geological Survey and the Smithsonian Institution (not at the same time of course, he was mortal after all), “Snowshoe Charlie’s” contributions not only to science, but American political and geographic history as well, merit at least a thick book to be written about them all to themselves.

As an author, Professor Carroll’s skill lies not only in his encyclopedic knowledge of his subjects but also in his ability to communicate his knowledge to the reader in a way that is erudite yet personal. He doesn’t shrink from presenting some of the more complex aspects of his subjects’ scientific investigations yet at the same time he never loses sight of the fact that the people about whom he is writing were just that – people. Because of this, the reader is allowed, even encouraged, to develop a deeper connection with them and their work than might be commonly assumed in a work on such subjects; and it is through this connection that the truly remarkable aspect of both the discoverers and their discoveries is most effectively communicated.

Remarkable Creatures was honored as one of the 2009 finalists in non-fiction for the National Book Award.

Title: Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species

Author: Sean B. Carroll

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Format: hardcover, 352 pages

ISBN-13/EAN: 9780151014859

In accordance with Federal Trade Commission 16 CFR Part 255, it is disclosed that the copy of the book read in order to produce this review was provided gratis to the reviewer by the publisher.

Recounting the life of a notoriously private person is, not unexpectedly, a very difficult task. In the case of Roger Tory Peterson, the activity is made all the more difficult by the fact that one facet of his life, his creation and refinement of the modern field guide, so dominates his popular legacy. But while in the minds of millions of nature enthusiasts the name “Peterson” is nearly eponymous with the very idea of a field guide itself, to limit one’s attention to this admittedly monolithic achievement of such a talented and complex man is to misjudge the importance of his true legacy to humanity’s relationship with nature. Fortunately, Douglas Carlson’s biography is sufficiently expansive in scope to encompass the many facets of Peterson without being unwieldy in length or needlessly excessive in detail.

While most who are at all familiar with Roger Tory Peterson know him as an illustrator of birds, butterflies, and flowers, to know him as only this is to miss the genius and importance and of a person who is arguably one of the most influential naturalists of the twentieth century. In his nearly eighty-eight years walking upon the earth, Peterson not only transformed the way millions have come to know and appreciate nature, he played a crucial role in many of the century’s most important conservation efforts, including laying the groundwork for what Rachel Carson would refine and finally bring to the wider world in Silent Spring, the danger to the ecosystem in general and bird life in particular from the heavy-handed and excessive use of chemical pesticides.

Yet as Carlson so skillfully points out in this eminently readable biography, Peterson never truly felt satisfied with these accomplishments; torn between the world of fine art and the craft of nature illustration, he was endlessly buffeted by feelings of melancholy and failure. Despite his original 1934 work A Field Guide to the Birds being an instant success, spawning a bookshelf full of topically expanded volumes, and, in successive editions, never being out of print to this very day, he aspired to do more – and indeed do more he did.

It is in this expansion of the reader’s understanding of Peterson that Carlson’s skill as a biographer particularly shines. We are introduced to Peterson the teacher, Peterson the naturalist, Peterson the fine artist, Peterson the author, and Peterson the photographer. Most challenging but perhaps most important of all, we also get a glimpse, albeit sometimes through a gauzy veil, of Peterson the man. Not luridly defined by a litany of faults and shortcomings, as a lesser biographer might do, but humanely with care and respect. Excuses are never made nor are trite pop psychology analyses entertained. Upon turning the final page of this biography, the reader comes to feel as if someone who was once little more than a name on the cover of a familiar book is now a fondly remembered and highly regarded old friend.

(This review originally appeared in Bird Watcher’s Digest, Volume 30, No. 5, May / June, 2008)

Title: Roger Tory Peterson: A Biography

Series: Mildred Wyatt-Wold Series in Ornithology

Author: Douglas Carlson

Hardcover: 304 pages

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Publication Date: October 1, 2007

ISBN-10: 029271680X

ISBN-13: 978-0292716803

In accordance with Federal Trade Commission 16 CFR Part 255, it is disclosed that the copy of the book read in order to produce this review was provided gratis to the reviewer by the the editors of Bird Watcher’s Digest, the publication in which the review was originally published.