Synopses & Reviews
Two books on the American wilderness written by the great outdoorsman before he was president are introduced by Stephen Ambrose, bestselling author of undaunted Courage.
In 1884, beset by personal tragedy, the young Theodore Roosevelt left his fledgling political career in New York to live on a farm in the Dakota Badlands. These two books are a result of his sojourn in the West. In Hunting Trips of a Ranchman (1885) Theodore Roosevelt describes the natural beauty of his surroundings as he tracks a massive twelve-hundred-pound bear, and in The Wilderness Hunter (1893) he provides a meticulous account of the habits of the great bear. Each book is full of observations of the West, its animals, landscape, and people. Roosevelt's irrepressible nature shines through as he writes of his love of hunting and nature, which were instrumental in the beginnings of the modern conservation movement.
As Stephen E. Ambrose writes in his introduction: "In these books he introduces us to a West that flourished but briefly, and to animals that are still with us, by telling hunting stories that are timeless".
Synopsis
Written during his days as a ranchman in the Dakota Bad Lands, these two wilderness tales by Theodore Roosevelt endure today as part of the classic folklore of the West. The narratives provide vivid portraits of the land as well as the people and animals that inhabited it, underscoring Roosevelt's abiding concerns as a naturalist.
Originally published in 1885, Hunting Trips of a Ranchman chronicles Roosevelt's adventures tracking a twelve-hundred-pound grizzly bear in the pine forests of the Bighorn Mountains. Yet some of the best sections are those in which Roosevelt muses on the beauty of the Bad Lands and the simple pleasures of ranch life. The British Spectator said the book "could claim an honorable place on the same shelf as Walton's Compleat Angler." The Wilderness Hunter, which came out in 1893, remains perhaps the most detailed account of the grizzly bear ever recorded. Introduction by Stephen E. Ambrose.