There should be no doubt in anyone's mind, after having read this highly focused monograph on the 26th president of the United States, that Theodore Roosevelt Jr (1858–1919) was one of the two most important leaders the USA has ever had. In a nutshell, it was Abraham Lincoln who emancipated all the people of the USA, and Roosevelt who did the same for all the other living things. Roosevelt was clearly a giant of a man whose numerous diverse accomplishments would amply serve to fill many weighty biographies, and have indeed done so. However, only The Wilderness Warrior has dwelt specifically upon Roosevelt's monumental pioneering contributions to environmental conservation and a land ethic.
We humans must share the biosphere with the other living things on Earth in some equitable fashion, doing so both for their inherent good and ours. Here the reader will learn that Roosevelt seems to have been the first individual on Earth with the power to recognize and address this obligation, who then went on to do so. It was he, and essentially he alone, who had the insight and the vision to recognize the moral imperative to set aside substantial areas of diverse habitats so that the plants and animals depending on them would not begin one by one to slip away into oblivion. Roosevelt was convinced that humans had a sacred obligation to protect the Earth's natural wonders and diverse species, and, far ahead of the curve, he further recognized the human need to be able to experience nature in all its grandeur, and thus to have access to the healing powers of the natural world. During his eight years in the White House (1901–1909), he single-handedly (and despite growing opposition, especially from western states) created a staggering c. 229 protected areas under a variety of guises, many decades before that became an evident necessity to most ecologists and some humanists. The area under protection added up to c. 243 million acres (98 million hectares), thus representing for the USA what in years to come was to become the recommended 10% global aspiration. The USA became the first nation in the world to formally set aside in perpetuity a significant fraction of its territory for nature, a precedent soon followed by Sweden and, subsequently, to an adequate extent by a very slowly growing number of additional countries.
In childhood, Roosevelt had become entranced with the outdoors, becoming a dedicated amateur ornithologist, a drive to observe birds that remained with him throughout life. John James Audubon was one of his models, and he devoured Charles Darwin's Origin of Species (with enduring subsequent influence on his thinking). The reader learns that Roosevelt was infuriated by any cruelty to animals, whether domestic or wild. Conversely, he recognized nature's predator/prey relationships and the accompanying violent deaths experienced by the prey animals.
Roosevelt was no vegetarian, but an ardent hunter, who followed a strict code of hunting ethics (noting that hunting deaths were the least violent way for a game animal to die). He vehemently opposed trapping with steel-jaw traps and such pastimes as cockfighting, encouraged the humane treatment and humane slaughtering of livestock, and supported the establishment of animal humane societies.
The author, a Professor of History at Rice University, has scoured literally tens of thousands of letters and other published and unpublished documents, many not previously combed through by other scholars, his citations alone running to 65 pages of small print. Various chapters cover Roosevelt's incredibly full life, among them describing especially: overcoming his frail childhood; as Governor, reforming the New York Fisheries, Game, & Forest Commission (basing his actions on Vermont's enlightened conservation laws and practices, those in turn, based on George Perkins Marsh's legacy; see pp. 281, 389–390); the progressive reforms he imposed as President upon the Departments of Agriculture and Interior; his several actions to save various species in imminent danger of extinction (at one point dispatching US Marines to safeguard seabirds on Midway atoll); and the virtually extra-legal means to which he had to resort in order to save the Grand Canyon and several other similarly extraordinary sites.
To sum up, the nearly thousand pages of this book are superbly organized into 18 coherent chapters, the writing throughout is clear and for the most part engaging (only occasionally becoming a bit ponderous), the five dozen or so black-and-white illustrations scattered throughout have been well chosen to enrich the text and the 35-page index is adequately comprehensive. This tome is clearly destined to be an enduring classic contribution to the fields of environmental conservation, American history and beyond.
