On John James Audubon (1785–1851) and John Muir (1838–1914), both of whom have come in for an overdue reckoning…
Audubon’s birds, Audubon’s words
Few books are more famous than John James Audubon’s Birds of America. From the moment his birds began to emerge from the printing press in the 1820s, people marveled at their liveliness, as if the images might literally fly off the page in a ruffle of feathers. That liveliness was the product of Audubon’s genius and his love for the …