Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Wilderness Warrior
For me this year has been a bonanza of reading. It helps that I finally finished my Ph.D., but I also have several sites that I use to find new books to read. They have helped to break me out of my normal genre (mind you I still only read non-fiction) and learn a whole lot. In case you're interested I use the the WashPost's blog page, the one on the NewYorkTimes and the HistoryBookClub (which has the amazing offer of 4 books for $15 basically as many times as you want!).

At any rate one of the many perks of doing this page is that I get offers from publishers to read their books free. To date I have turned them all down - until now. Douglas Brinkley has a new 800 page book on the environmental side of Teddy Roosevelt. If you have never heard of Brinkley, he has become the new Stephen Ambrose in that he seems to have a new really well written and researched book come out almost every year.

Honestly the scary thing about Wilderness Warrior is its size (unless you get the Kindle edition), but once you start reading it the story grabs you. This surprises me because I didn't know I cared about bird watching, going to national parks, etc. But this book (I'm 3/4s done) is VERY interesting even when it webs into other people's lives twice removed from TR. Here is a rather descriptive review from the HuffingtonPost and here is an intelligent interview from FoxNews.(how's that for balance?!).