Roger Tory Peterson: A Biography (Mildred Wyatt-Wold Series in Ornithology) - Hardcover

Carlson, Douglas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 029271680X ISBN 13: 9780292716803

Publisher: University of Texas Press, 2007

Synopsis

Beginning with his 1934 Field Guide to the Birds, Roger Tory Peterson introduced literally millions of people to the pleasures of observing birds in the wild. His field guide, which has gone through five editions and sold more than four million copies, fostered an appreciation for the natural world that set the stage for the contemporary environmental movement. When Rachel Carson's Silent Spring sounded a warning about the threat to birds and their habitats in the 1960s, the Peterson field guides had already prepared the public and the scientific community to heed the warning and fight to save habitat and protect endangered species—a result that Peterson wholeheartedly approved.

In this authoritative, highly readable biography of Roger Tory Peterson (1908-1996), Douglas Carlson creates a fascinating portrait of the complex, often conflicted man behind the brand name. He describes how Peterson's obsession with birds began in boyhood and continued throughout a multifaceted career as a painter, writer, educator, environmentalist, and photographer. Carlson traces Peterson's long struggle to become both an accomplished bird artist and a scientific naturalist—competing goals that drove Peterson to work to the point of exhaustion and that also deprived him of many aspects of a normal personal life. Carlson also records Peterson's many lasting achievements, from the phenomenal success of the field guides, to the bird paintings that brought him renown as "the twentieth century's Audubon," to the establishment of the Roger Tory Peterson Institute to carry on his work in conservation and education.

About this title

About the Author:

Douglas Carlson is a retired professor of English who has written extensively about the natural world. A longtime resident of Jamestown, New York, where Roger Tory Peterson grew up, Carlson now lives in Athens, Georgia, where he works on the Georgia Review.

From Publishers Weekly:

Roger Peterson (1908–1996) catapulted to fame in 1934 with the publication (after four rejections) of A Field Guide to the Birds, which almost immediately sold out its first printing of 2,000 copies. Considered the first modern guide of its kind, Peterson's book featured descriptions of nearly 500 species of birds, including plumages and characteristic behavior, as well as his own meticulous illustrations of each bird—all of which were part of what became known as the Peterson Identification System. In this excellent biography, Carlson, an editor and regular contributor to the Georgia Review, skillfully shows how Peterson used his talents as an artist and educator to make the guide a bridge between academic ornithologists and the general public, an accomplishment that has made it, after five editions, the most important contribution to bird (and nature) study in the twentieth century, as well as an inspiration for conservation, environmentalism and ecological studies. Carlson also provides the best look so far at the influence on Peterson's work of his youth in Jamestown, N.Y., as well as some of the difficulties, after his death, in building the Roger Tory Peterson Institute in Jamestown, where his legacy continues unabated today. 15 b&w photos. (Oct.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 029271680X
• ISBN 13: 9780292716803
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 308