Under a Wild Sky: John James Audubon and the Making of the Birds of America by William SouderMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
A pleasure to read. Previously I was dimly aware of Audubon's background beyond the acclaimed naturalist who painted life-size birds (if you ever get to see the original size of the folios, they are *massive). Who knew that he was a bastard son of a sea captain (inb4 "Hey should this be shoved at Lin-Manuel Miranda?") and self-trained naturalist could go toe-to-toe with European zoologists and then some, yet at the same time build up his persona as a roguish American frontiersmen with embellishments and some outright zoological fabrications (the description of rattlesnakes as tree-dwellers, for example)?
I would have liked to see some of the prints referenced (especially those in the chapters' epigraphs), but there are plenty of other books for that.
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