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Happy Birthday Mr. Audubon!

Written on: April 26th, 2010 in Blog Posts

I noticed this morning that today is the birthday of James Audubon, America’s most famous ornithologist and naturalist. He was born 225 years ago in Haiti, and fled to the United States 18 years later. In his most famous work, he illustrated more than 1,000 American birds in a series of 435 engravings- releasing them to subscribers 5 at a time over the course of 11 years. (the plate featured above is Buteo lagopus, or the Rough Legged Hawk)

If you want to see the illustrations in all of their original size and majesty, you could do worse than take a trip to Philadelphia’s Academy of Natural Sciences. Every Friday, the Academy turns over a new leaf in its mammoth “double elephant folio”-sized bound collection of original plates from Audubon’s Birds of America (more than 50 inches tall!) If you go back every week for 8 1/2 years, you’ll see the full collection. Alternatively, you can check out a much more portable at 23 inches tall, “baby elephant folio” version of the book from your Delaware public library.

Post-Partisan Sunday Reviews

Written on: April 26th, 2010 in Blog Posts

Two highly recommended books in this Sunday’s New York Times come from the one particular side of the political aisle. No Apology, by Mitt Romney and Karl Rove’s Courage and Consequence “offer far deeper insights than have ever been available before” into the the men themselves and to some extent the future and the past of the GOP. Rove’s book offers a nuanced and ultimately respectful view of the last President’s accomplishments, along with an account of his own life and thoughts on political strategy and campaigning. Romeny’s book is not “a classic candidate-in-waiting book”, but is full of his hallmark “corny sense of humor, blunt patriotism and strait-laced formality”, as he presents a plainspoken critique of the current administration and an obvious preview of themes we will hear more of in 2012.

Other titles reviewed this week include The Heights, by Peter Hedges- a “remarkably cheerful” view of a struggling middle class family’s adaptation to suburbia, and Stuff by Randy Frost, which presents 20 years of research and case studies of compulsive hoarders.