Big Books: Part 3

John James Audubon: The Making of an American

Knopf, 528 pp., $30

The bastard son of a French naval officer and a chambermaid ... draft dodger ... a doodler since childhood ... perennially broke until his first big break ... supported by his superdevoted wife, Lucy, especially when he was off on one of his extended jaunts through the wilderness. He would seem to have been a spiritual cousin of the genus Austex-slackerus musicianartistwriteri, but how much does the average person know about the man besides his life's work, Birds of America? Fact is, Audubon's grand DIY project (which he published himself and financed through subscription sales) is a fantastic and compelling story all its own. Besides bringing us the man behind the birds, Richard Rhodes (best known for his histories of the atomic and hydrogen bombs) frames the life of the great naturalist within the great initial strokes of America's self-invention: the early exploration of the American wilderness, the Louisiana Purchase, the War of 1812, the Indian wars, and the beginning of the paving of the continent. The book includes 16 color plates, plus numerous black-and-white engravings.