We see that javascript is disabled or not supported by your browser - javascript is needed for important actions on the site. Read more

What's New - Home - Login

Member $avings: $81,566,916.70 | Books Available: 795,812 | Members Online: 22

Swap Used Books - Buy New Books at Great Prices!

How To Swap Books Sign Up Search submenu

PBS Market (New Books)

Gift Buying Guide

Book Browser Advanced Search Books Posted Today Member Book Reviews Award Winning Books NYT Best Sellers Amazon Best Sellers Most Traveled Copies Club Wish List

Discussion Forums Book Lists

Club Lists My Book Lists My Watched Lists Create a List

Blog Donations

School Donation Program In Memory of... Military Donation Program Friends of PBS

Box-O-Books Maps The Eclectic Pen Fun Stuff

20 Questions Sudoku Bookmark Creator

Top 100

Requests Posts Swappers Referrers Reviewers

Pulse of PBS Spread The Word

Invite Friends Bookmarks Facebook Page Facebook App More Ways...

Photo Gallery Recipes Club Tag Cloud Member Testimonials

Help Center submenu

How To Swap Books Browse Help Docs Ask the Librarian PBS Member Icons Live Help

Kiosk

PBS Market (New Books) Go Shopping Buy Credits Buy PBS Money Upgrade Membership Gift Certificates Transfer Credits

Need Help?

Search - John James Audubon : The Making of an American

John James Audubon The Making of an American
Author: Richard Rhodes

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Richard Rhodes, the first major biography of John James Audubon in forty years, and the first to illuminate fully the private and family life of the master illustrator of the natural world. — Rhodes shows us young Audubon arriving in New York from France in 1803, his illegitimacy a painful secret, ... more »speaking no English but already drawing and observing birds. We see him falling in love, marrying the wellborn English girl next door, crossing the Appalachians to frontier Kentucky to start a new life, fashioning himself into an American just as his adopted country was finding its identity.

Here is Audubon exploring the wilderness of birds -- pelicans wading the shallows of interior rivers, songbirds flocking, passenger pigeons darkening the skies -- and teaching himself to revivify them in glorious life-size images. Now he finds his calling: to take his hundreds of watercolor drawings to England to be engraved in a great multivolume work called The Birds of America. Within weeks of his arrival there in 1826, he achieves remarkable celebrity as “the American Woodsman.” He publishes his major work as well as five volumes of bird biographies enhanced by his authentic descriptions of pioneer American life.

Audubon’s story is an artist’s story but also a moving love story. In his day, communications by letter across the ocean were so slow and uncertain that John James and his wife, Lucy, almost lost each other in the three years when the Atlantic separated them -- until he crossed the Atlantic and half the American continent to claim her. Their letters during this time are intimate, moving, and painful, and they attest to an enduring love.

We examine Audubon’s legacy of inspired observation -- the sonorities of a wilderness now lost, the brash life of a new nation just inventing itself -- precisely, truthfully, lyrically captured. And we see Audubon in the fullness of his years, made rich by his magnificent work, winning public honor: embraced by writers and scientists, fêted by presidents and royalty.

Here is a revelation of Audubon as the major American artist he is. And here he emerges for the first time in his full humanity -- handsome, charming, volatile, ambitious, loving, canny, immensely energetic. Richard Rhodes has given us an indispensable portrait of a true American icon.

The Market's bargain prices are even better for Paperbackswap club members!

Retail Price: ~~$21.00~~
Buy New (Paperback): $15.39 (save 26%) or
Become a PBS member and pay $11.49+1 PBS book credit Help icon

(save 45%)

ISBN-13: 9780375713934
ISBN-10: 037571393X
Publication Date: 4/11/2006
Pages: 528
Rating:

Currently 3.5/5 Stars.

3.5 stars, based on 1 rating

Publisher: Vintage
Book Type: Paperback
Other Versions: Hardcover
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

Read All 1 Book Reviews of "John James Audubon The Making of an American"

Genres:

Arts & Photography >> Individual Artists >> ( A-C ) >> Audubon, John James
Arts & Photography >> Individual Artists >> General
Biographies & Memoirs >> Arts & Literature >> Artists, Architects & Photographers
Biographies & Memoirs >> General
Outdoors & Nature >> Birdwatching >> General

Back to the Top ↑

Search - John James Audubon : The Making of an American

Loading...