Scanning the Bookshelf

Of the four figures carved into Mount Rushmore, Theodore Roosevelt has the slipperiest claim on greatness. Washington and Jefferson were indispensable actors in the creation of this nation, of course, while Lincoln preserved the Union. Roosevelt, for all his trust-busting, canal-building, big-stick-wielding, Progressive-era accomplishments, never had to surmount a national crisis of life-or-death proportions.

But Douglas Brinkley's "Wilderness Warrior" proves conclusively that, by at least one measure, Theodore Roosevelt was our greatest president: he was the most effective conservationist who ever occupied the Oval Office.

Roosevelt "was able to help sell the U.S. Congress, the departments of Agriculture and Interior, and eventually Western Americans on the notion that saving natural wonders, wildlife species, timberlands, and diverse habitats was a patriotic endeavor," Brinkley notes.

During his presidency (1901-1909), he marshaled an unprecedented array of executive powers on behalf of American flora and fauna. Citing precedent and a loose interpretation of the Antiquities Act of 1906, he created six national parks, 18 national monuments, four national game preserves and 51 federal bird reservations. He also expanded or established 150 national forests. Although unnoticed or underemphasized by most Roosevelt biographers, this was an accomplishment of staggering proportions. The federal parks and reserves he created amount to 232 million acres, or the equivalent of more than two Californias.

The strong-willed and politically skillful New Yorker was inspired by his lifelong devotion to Charles Darwin. Roosevelt "served," Brinkley writes, "as the American spokesman for mainstreaming evolutionary theories."

A prolific biographer and Rice University history professor, Brinkley paints Theodore Roosevelt in a compelling shade of green. While the author never makes explicit the parallels to our own times, there's really no need. Federal stewardship over natural resources remains a hot-button issue, as evidenced by our ongoing energy policy tussles. And nearly 150 years after Darwin published "On the Origin of Species," evolution was disavowed by several GOP candidates during a televised election-season debate.

"Wilderness Warrior" is a valuable reminder of a time when Republican presidents were staunch conservationists — Ulysses S.

Grant invented the national park system by establishing Yellowstone, while Benjamin Harrison established 11 forest reserves — and when nature was eloquently and effectively championed by Washington power brokers. Despite its daunting length, Brinkley's narrative is brisk and compelling, and it features an engaging cast of characters. (He is a better-than-average stylist.)

While Roosevelt's friendship with John Muir has been well-documented elsewhere, the Scottish-born bard of the Sierra Nevada receives his due here, too. But he is surrounded by a "Who's Who" of late 19th- and early 20th-century naturalists. There's George Bird Grinnell, co-founder with Roosevelt of the Boone & Crockett Club, a band of conservation-minded game hunters; John Burroughs, ornithologist and Roosevelt confidant; and Spencer Baird, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and founder of the Wood's Hole laboratory. When Roosevelt decided to part with his "museum," his boyhood collection of mounted birds and mammals, Baird was the beneficiary.

These friendships, as well as his later-in-life partnership with forester Gifford Pinchot, were not casual. Brinkley demonstrates that Roosevelt's links to his fellow naturalists informed many of his signature initiatives in public office.

Many, but not all. "Wilderness Warrior," despite its many virtues and pages, is not for anyone seeking a single-volume life of this American original. The Panama Canal is mentioned only in passing. Roosevelt's mediation of the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 earns two pages, while a hunting vacation in Oklahoma merits 13. The latter earned Roosevelt several trophies; the former, the Nobel Peace Prize. Moreover, Brinkley shies away from probing the social and political implications of this president's Darwinian views. Roosevelt was capable of befriending people of other races — Booker T. Washington and Japan's foreign minister, Baron Jutaro Komura, were both long-term correspondents — but he believed in the white race's innate superiority.

Fortunately, several stylishly written biographies detail Roosevelt's protean interests. For readers who have already devoured Edmund Morris' two-volume life and H.W. Brands' "T.R.," "Wilderness Warrior" is a brilliant exploration of one facet of this fascinating life. And for anyone tired of seeing conservationism mocked as a fringe movement, lying outside the American political mainstream, Douglas Brinkley's book is a persuasive and uplifting rebuttal.

To find out more about Peter Rowe and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS.COM