Born and raised in Mississippi, I have long been fascinated with the natural history of the South and of the Americas in general. And as an outdoorsy guy, a NOLS graudate, mountain-biker, trail-runner, and paddler, I revel in reading accounts of the early days of Western exploration in the woodlands, mountains, and coastal regions of our hemisphere. Finally, as an avid reader and now author, I constantly seek out enthralling and wide-ranging narratives about exploration, outdoor adventure, and the natural world.
I wrote...
Nature's Messenger: Mark Catesby and His Adventures in a New World
In this dynamic, fresh story, Patrick explores the life of naturalist and artist Mark Catesby—who predated John James Audubon by nearly a century— and his influence on how we understand American wildlife.
In 1722, Mark Catesby stepped ashore in Charles Town in the Carolina colony. Over the next four years, this young naturalist explored deep into America’s natural wonders, collecting and drawing plants and animals never seen back in the Old World. Catesby then produced his magnificent and groundbreaking book, The Natural History of Carolina, the first-ever illustrated account of American flora and fauna. It was a time of discovery, intellectual ferment, and the rise of the British Empire. There on history’s leading edge, recording the extraordinary and often violent mingling of cultures as well as of nature, was Mark Catesby.
This was an essential reference for my own book about Mark Catesby, the artist/explorer/naturalist who created the first illustrated book on North American wildlife. McBurney is an esteemed art historian; her book is academic yet far from dry—a large-format, sumptuously-illustrated book about a remarkable man and his groundbreaking work.
The life and art of the 18th-century naturalist Mark Catesby, and his pioneering work depicting the flora and fauna of North America, are explored in vibrant detail
This book explores the life and work of the celebrated eighteenth-century English naturalist, explorer, artist and author Mark Catesby (1683-1749). During Catesby's lifetime, science was poised to shift from a world of amateur virtuosi to one of professional experts. Working against a backdrop of global travel that incorporated collecting and direct observation of nature, Catesby spent two prolonged periods in the New World - in Virginia (1712-19) and South Carolina and the Bahamas…
I had never heard of Maria Sybilla Merian before researching my latest book, but her life was amazing.
A brilliant artist, Merian lived an unconventional life—even before going to the Dutch colony of Surinam in 1698 accompanied only by her daughter. There Merian produced stunning and important works, illustrating the life cycles of insects and relationships between insect and plant species.
Before Darwin, before Audubon, before Gilbert White, there was Merian. An artist turned naturalist, known for her botanical illustrations, Maria Sybilla Merian was born in Germany just sixteen years after Galileo proclaimed that the earth orbited the sun. But at the age of fifty she sailed from Europe to the New World on a solo scientific expedition to study insect metamorphosis - an unheard-of journey for any naturalist at that time, much less an unaccompanied woman. When she returned she produced a book that secured her reputation, only to have it savaged in the nineteenth century by scientists who disdained…
William Bartram is the first great Native American naturalist.
His Travels recount his journeys through the American Southeast between 1773 and 1776, and contain unparalleled descriptions of the flora and fauna of the region, as well as his ethnographic studies of Native Americans there. The Library of America edition is top-notch.
Artist, writer, botanist, gardener, naturalist, intrepid wilderness explorer, and self-styled “philosophical pilgrim,” William Bartram was an extraordinary figure in eighteenth-century American life. The first American to devote himself to what we would now call the environment, Bartram was the most significant American writer before Thoreau and a nature artist who rivals Audubon. He was also a pioneering ethnographer whose works are a crucial source for the study of the Indian cultures of southeastern America. The Library of America presents the first collection of his writings and the largest gathering of his remarkable drawings ever published.
The real-life inspiration for both Gulliver’s Travels and Robinson Crusoe, William Dampier was a pirate turned legit explorer who circumnavigated the earth three times, and was the first European to reach the Galapagos and to encounter the aboriginal people of Australia.
He makes my list because of his explorations of the Caribbean…and because I really wanted to include him!
Seventeenth-century pirate genius William Dampier sailed around the world three times when crossing the Pacific was a major feat, was the first explorer to visit all five continents, and reached Australia eighty years before Captain Cook. His exploits created a sensation in Europe. Swift and Defoe used his experiences in writing Gulliver's Travels and Robinson Crusoe. Darwin incorporated his concept of "sub-species" into the theory of evolution. Dampier's description of breadfruit was the impetus for Captain Bligh's voyage on the Bounty. He was so influential that today he has more than one thousand entries in the Oxford English Dictionary, including…
This biography of Alexander von Humboldt is very worthy for a ton of reasons, but Humboldt’s explorations in the Americas between 1799-1804 get him on this list.
Thomas Jefferson called Humboldt “the most scientific man of the age” for good reason: Humboldt is considered the father of ecology, and of the study of the environment. One of the best narrative nonfiction books of recent years.
WINNER OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE 2016
'A thrilling adventure story' Bill Bryson
'Dazzling' Literary Review
'Brilliant' Sunday Express
'Extraordinary and gripping' New Scientist
'A superb biography' The Economist
'An exhilarating armchair voyage' GILES MILTON, Mail on Sunday
Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) is the great lost scientist - more things are named after him than anyone else. There are towns, rivers, mountain ranges, the ocean current that runs along the South American coast, there's a penguin, a giant squid - even the Mare Humboldtianum on the moon.
I am adopted. For most of my life, I didn’t identify as adopted. I shoved that away because of the shame I felt about being adopted and not truly fitting into my family. But then two things happened: I had my own biological children, the only two people I know to date to whom I am biologically related, and then shortly after my second daughter was born, my older sister, also an adoptee, died of a drug overdose. These sequential births and death put my life on a new trajectory, and I started writing, out of grief, the history of adoption and motherhood in America.
I grew up thinking that being adopted didn’t matter. I was wrong. This book is my journey uncovering the significance and true history of adoption practices in America. Now, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women’s reproductive rights places an even greater emphasis on adoption. As a mother, historian, and adoptee, I am uniquely qualified to uncover the policies and practices of adoption.
The history of adoption, reframed through the voices of adoptees like me, and mothers who have been forced to relinquish their babies, blows apart old narratives…
Who Is a Worthy Mother?: An Intimate History of Adoption
Nearly every person in the United States is affected by adoption. Adoption practices are woven into the fabric of American society and reflect how our nation values human beings, particularly mothers. In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women's reproductive rights places an even greater emphasis on adoption. As a mother, historian, and adoptee, Rebecca C. Wellington is uniquely qualified to uncover the policies and practices of adoption. Wellington's timely-and deeply researched-account amplifies previously marginalized voices and exposes the social and racial biases embedded in the United States' adoption industry.…
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