Douglas Brinkley's The Wilderness Warrior celebrated Theodore
Roosevelt's spirit of outdoor exploration and bold vision to protect 234
million acres of wild America. Now, in Rightful Heritage, Brinkley
turns his attention to another indefatigable environmental
leader--Teddy's distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt--chronicling
his essential yet undersung legacy as the founder of the Civilian
Conservation Corps (CCC) and premier protector of America's public
lands. FDR built from scratch dozens of state park systems and scenic
roadways. Pristine landscapes such as the Great Smokies, the Everglades,
Joshua Tree, the Olympics, Big Bend, the Channel Islands, Mammoth Cave,
and the slickrock wilderness of Utah were forever saved by his
leadership.
Brinkley traces FDR's love for the natural world back to his youth spent
exploring the Hudson River Valley and bird-watching. As America's
president from 1933 to 1945, Roosevelt, a consummate political
strategist, established hundreds of federal migratory bird refuges and
spearheaded the modern endangered species movement. He brilliantly
positioned his conservation goals as economic policy to fight the severe
unemployment of the Great Depression. During its nine-year existence,
the CCC put nearly three million young men to work on conservation
projects--including building trails in the national parks, pollution
control, land restoration to combat the Dust Bowl, and planting more
than two billion trees.
Within the narrative are brilliant capsule biographies of such
environmental warriors as Eleanor Roosevelt, Harold Ickes, and Rosalie
Edge. Rightful Heritage is essential reading for everyone seeking to
preserve our treasured landscapes as an American birthright.
