by Elizabeth J. Rosenthal
The Lyons Press, 2008
Roger Tory Peterson, a man in need of a big biography, finally has one. At 422 pages, Elizabeth Rosenthal delivers a thorough and masterful account of the man known to friends as the “King Penguin.”
It can be argued that no one in our lifetime has done more to encourage the appreciation of natural history than Peterson, a writer, artist, illustrator, photographer, teacher, and creator of the modern field guide. So profound was his 65-year contribution to wildlife and wildlands conservation that he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980 and was nominated for the Noble Peace Prize in 1983 and again in 1986, when he made the short list of four.
Who among us didn’t grow up with Peterson’s A Field Guide to the Birds of Eastern and Central North America, its distinctive arrows highlighting field marks? First published in 1933 and completely revamped three times (the final edition appeared in 1980), this mother of all field guides sold millions of copies and begot Houghton Mifflin’s Peterson Series, which today numbers 50 titles and includes guides to everything from animal tracks to moths, the atmosphere to eastern forests, seashells to ferns.
Peterson was an enormously accomplished man. He was a founder of the World Wildlife Fund; he invented the “Big Year” birding competitions with his book Wild America (a childhood favorite of mine); he received nine honorary doctorates; he helped steer the National Audubon Society out of the depression and into the forefront of the environmental movement; and he was the National Wildlife Federation’s director of art for nearly 30 years. But Rosenthal describes more than just Peterson’s accomplishments; she also exposes his underbelly.
The globetrotting naturalist was extremely generous to colleagues, students, and organizations in need of his help or endorsement but had little time for his wives and children. Barbara, Peterson’s second wife, to whom he was married for 33 years, mothered his four children, raised their family, took care of their homestead, edited and promoted his work, booked his engagements, made sure he was prepared for meetings, lectures, seminars, tours, and made it possible for his considerable genius to flower. After devoting her life to him, she was shopped out for a younger version.
Peterson’s third wife, Virginia, teetering on the brink of pathological insecurity, drove a wedge between her husband and his grown kids, pried herself into his interviews, and determined whom he saw or spoke to. She even monitored phone calls. Many Connecticut neighbors and longtime friends were surgically excised from his social schedule.
Using volumes of letters and more than a hundred interviews, Rosenthal bares a man who frets that the world sees him as an illustrator, not an artist. She’s at her expositional best writing about his pain at the death of old friends and his eloquent defense of the fourth edition of the eastern field guide, which, although both the hardcover and paperback versions appeared simultaneously on The New York Times best-sellers list, received poor reviews from birders who demanded more. Perhaps, writes Rosenthal, he “had created a monster of telescope-toting . . . authorities . . .”, a progeny “itching for a different sort of Peterson revision than they got.”
He had fledged his own critics.