Grinnell

America's Environmental Pioneer and His Restless Drive to Save the West

By: John Taliaferro

Narrated by: Joe Barrett

Before Rachel Carson, there was George Bird Grinnell - the man whose prophetic vision did nothing less than launch American conservation.

George Bird Grinnell, the son of a New York merchant, saw a different future for a nation in the thrall of the Industrial Age. With railroads scarring virgin lands and the formerly vast buffalo herds decimated, the country faced a crossroads: Could it pursue Manifest Destiny without destroying its natural bounty and beauty? The alarm that Grinnell sounded would spark America's conservation movement. Yet today his name has been forgotten - an omission that John Taliaferro's commanding biography now sets right with historical care and narrative flair.

Drawing on 40,000 pages of Grinnell's correspondence and dozens of his diaries, Taliaferro reveals a man whose deeds and high-mindedness earned him a lustrous peerage, from presidents to chiefs, Audubon to Aldo Leopold, John Muir to Gifford Pinchot, Edward S. Curtis to Edward H. Harriman. Throughout his long life, Grinnell was bound by family and sustained by intimate friendships, toggling between the East and the West. As Taliaferro's enthralling portrait demonstrates, it was this tension that wound Grinnell's nearly inexhaustible spring and honed his vision - a vision that still guides the imperiled future of our national treasures.

©2019 John Taliaferro (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Excellent Story of a Revered Man

What a detailed Biography of an Exceptional Man, his passion for the Preservation and Sensible use of the Lands and its Native peoples is unmatched, Excellent auditory and gracefully told, the Man the Legend

story telling

I loved the book and listening to the accounts of this great man in history.

Detailed account of an important American

The author has clearly demonstrated a thorough investigation into the life of George Bird Grinnell. At times dry, but usually with sufficient interest to keep the reader listening. Our modern perspectives may be critical of Grinnell’s view of Native peoples, but his contribution to American conservation cannot be denied.