Volume 51, Number 10 · June 10, 2004
The Heart of the Country
By Tim Flannery
Under a Wild Sky: John James Audubon and the Making of The Birds of America
by William Souder
North Point Press, 367 pp., $25.00
Audubon's Elephant: America's Greatest Naturalist and the Making of The Birds of America
by Duff Hart-Davis
Henry Holt, 288 pp., $27.50
During the late 1820s, colleagues, publishers, and potential customers alike would mutter warnings to John James Audubon that his plan to publish The Birds of America could never succeed, for the proposed book was utterly impractical—too large, too expensive. But when Audubon opened his great portfolio of drawings, a silence would descend on the room. 'The effect was like magic,' said John Wilson, as the images conveyed their viewers to the distant and mysterious land of America:
Review, 4015 words
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