"An unprecedented anthology of Audubon's lively and colorful writings about the American wilderness, edited by his award-winning biographer.Richard Rhodes gathers excerpts from Audubon's journals, letters and published works and reintroduces the great artist and ornithologist as an exceptional writer, a predecessor of Thoreau, Emerson and Melville. Here are vivid 'bird biographies', his correspondence with his devoted wife Lucy, journal accounts of his dramatic river journeys and hunting trips with the Osage Indians and a generous sampling of brief stories that have long been out of print.This classic volume provides a direct window into Audubon's electrifying encounter with early America, its wildlife and birds, its people and with its primordial wilderness."