Traces the life of John James Audubon, his efforts to record the wild birds of North America, and his fifteen-year struggle against a conventional scientific establishment to find a publisher for his masterwork, "The Birds of America." In the century and a half since John James Audubon's death, his name has become synonymous with wildlife conservation and natural history. But few people know what a complicated figure he was -- or the dramatic story...

Was John James Audubon, America’s most celebrated naturalist, really Louis Charles, Duc de Normandie, the Lost Dauphin of eighteenth-century France? The possibility that royalty flowed in the veins of Audubon has intrigued many a historian. Previous biographies have tried to unravel the threads of the Audubon family’s secret, but none have been as successful as I Who Should Command All. Extracts from letters of John James Audubon and statements...

Birds were "the objects of my greatest delight," wrote John James Audubon (1785-1851), founder of modern ornithology and one of the world's greatest bird painters. His masterpiece, The Birds of America, depicts almost five hundred North American bird species, each life-size image rendered in vibrant color. Audubon was also an explorer, a woodsman, a hunter, an entertaining and prolific writer, and an energetic self-promoter. Through talent and dogged...

Streshinsky researched Audubon's journals and letters in order to present this view of Audubon and his wife Lucy and their two sons as they traveled through the frontier, and as Audubon pioneered drawing from nature.

"An artist's uniquely personal journey across Audubon's America In the nineteenth century, ornithologist and painter John James Audubon set out to create a complete pictorial record of North American birdlife, traveling from Louisiana and the Florida Keys to the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the cliffs of the Yellowstone River. The resulting work, The Birds of America, stands as a monumental achievement in American art. Over a period of sixteen years,...

"He lands there in the summer of 1968, when the Apollo space missions are under way, Joe Pepitone is slugging for the New York Yankees, and the Vietnam War is raging. At home he lives with a father who has lost his way and a brother accused of robbery. And Doug's oldest brother is returning from Vietnam. Who knows what wounds his missions have given him? But Doug has his own mission, too, and it begins when he first sees the plates of John James Audubon's...

Uses the words of Audubon himself, selected from various sources, to present an account of the life and work of this nineteenth-century naturalist.

John James Audubon's story is dramatic and surprising. He was not born in America, but saw more of the North American continent than virtually anyone alive. His growing apprehension about the destruction of nature became his prophecy. As an artist and naturalist his achievements were monumental. John James Audubon: Drawn from Nature creates a meaningful portrait of Art and Science in the first decades of the 19th century.