From Publishers Weekly
Renowned for his knowledge of the American wilderness, John James Audubon (1785–1851) was equally adept at the quintessential American activity of self-invention. Arriving in New York City in 1803, the 18-year-old native of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) and illegitimate son of a French sea captain passed himself off as the Louisiana-born scion of a French admiral and claimed to have studied painting with the European master Jacques-Louis David. Audubon (even the name was false) came to the United States to manage a small estate his father co-owned near Philadelphia. Unsuccessful, he eventually tried his hand as a shopkeeper and a mill owner, but failed there, too. His passion for hunting—and for making life-size, realistically posed paintings of the animals he shot—led to the creation of his magnum opus, Birds of America, now one of the most admired works of American art. But this monumental venture was fraught with difficulties that sometimes brought the artist near the brink of despair. Audubon's work was initially scorned in the U.S.; he had to travel through Britain and France to arouse enough interest to fund the project. Even after its completion and its enthusiastic reception in Europe and the U.S., the work left the naturalist with only a modest income for a lifetime of effort. Souder (A Plague of Frogs) presents Audubon as a complex individual: a loving but distracted husband; a driven artist often plagued by doubts; a scrupulous observer of nature who thought nothing of fabricating some of his written material for dramatic effect. Sympathetic yet balanced, this account shows how much Audubon was shaped by the deep paradoxes of the time and place in which he lived. B&w illus. not seen by PW. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Booklist
John James Audubon is a legend in the worlds of both art and natural history, and, like many such iconographic figures, what we know of his life is a bare-bones outline. Audubon was born, illegitimately, in Haiti in 1785. Removed to France on the eve of Haiti's slave rebellion, he was adopted by his father and wife, and remained in France until sent to the U.S. to avoid conscription into Bonaparte's army. Filling in the details of Audubon's life in America, including his failures at business, his happy marriage, and his yearning to spend all of his time exploring the wilderness, Souder takes the reader into the heart of this enigmatic, self-made artist and naturalist. Audubon not only created the most famous depictions of birds that the world has ever seen, he also created himself and his mythology at the same time. Selling subscriptions to his bird paintings also involved selling himself, and Souder follows the tale of this driven man with insight and an almost fictional narrative. A highly readable biography. Nancy Bent
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
"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." --Bill McKibben

"In Under a Wild Sky, William Souder superbly captures John James Audubon in all his infuriating, contradictory, admirable richness--publicly vainglorious while consumed by self-doubt, a chronic liar and buckskin-clad charmer, an artistic visionary and peerless naturalist a generation ahead of his time. Souder 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, the man who forever changed how we see the natural world." --Scott Weidensaul



Book Description
The life and times of a complex genius and the masterpiece he created

In the century and a half since 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.

Before Audubon, ornithological illustrations depicted scaled-down birds perched in static poses. Wheeling beneath storm-wracked 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 the untamed spirit in Audubon--a self-taught painter and self-anointed aristocrat who, with his buckskins and long hair, wanted to be seen as both a hardened frontiersman and a cultured man of science.

In truth, neither his friends nor his detractors ever knew exactly who Audubon was or where he came from. Tormented by a fog of ambiguities surrounding his birth, he reinvented himself ceaselessly, creating a life as dramatic as his fictionalizations of it. But when he came east at thirty-eight--broke and desperate to find a publisher for his Birds--he ran squarely into a scientific establishment still wedded to convention and suspicious of the brash newcomer and his grandiose claims.

It took Audubon fifteen years to prevail in both his project and his vision. How he triumphed and what drove him is the subject of this gripping narrative.



About the Author
William Souder is the author of A Plague of Frogs and a frequent science contributor to The Washington Post and other publications. He lives near Minneapolis.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Before Audubon, ornithological illustrations depicted scaled-down birds perched in static poses. Wheeling beneath storm-wracked 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 the untamed spirit in Audubon - a self-taught painter and self-anointed aristocrat who, with his buckskins and long hair, wanted to be seen as both a hardened frontiersman and a cultured man of science." "But when he came east at thirty-eight - broke and desperate to find a publisher for his birds - he ran squarely into a scientific establishment still wedded to convention and suspicious of the brash newcomer and his grandiose claims." It took Audubon fifteen years to prevail in both his project and his vision. How he triumphed and what drove him are the subject of this narrative.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Renowned for his knowledge of the American wilderness, John James Audubon (1785-1851) was equally adept at the quintessential American activity of self-invention. Arriving in New York City in 1803, the 18-year-old native of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) and illegitimate son of a French sea captain passed himself off as the Louisiana-born scion of a French admiral and claimed to have studied painting with the European master Jacques-Louis David. Audubon (even the name was false) came to the United States to manage a small estate his father co-owned near Philadelphia. Unsuccessful, he eventually tried his hand as a shopkeeper and a mill owner, but failed there, too. His passion for hunting-and for making life-size, realistically posed paintings of the animals he shot-led to the creation of his magnum opus, Birds of America, now one of the most admired works of American art. But this monumental venture was fraught with difficulties that sometimes brought the artist near the brink of despair. Audubon's work was initially scorned in the U.S.; he had to travel through Britain and France to arouse enough interest to fund the project. Even after its completion and its enthusiastic reception in Europe and the U.S., the work left the naturalist with only a modest income for a lifetime of effort. Souder (A Plague of Frogs) presents Audubon as a complex individual: a loving but distracted husband; a driven artist often plagued by doubts; a scrupulous observer of nature who thought nothing of fabricating some of his written material for dramatic effect. Sympathetic yet balanced, this account shows how much Audubon was shaped by the deep paradoxes of the time and place in which he lived. B&w illus. not seen by PW. Agent, Christy Fletcher. (June) Forecasts: This volume will compete with the recently published and wonderfully illustrated Audubon's Elephant by Duff Hart-Davis. However, Under a Wild Sky gives a fuller account of Audubon's life and more context, and therefore the two will more than likely complement each other. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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