RECOMMENDED READING The Quotable Fisherman Nick Lyons. Skyhorse Publishing, 208 pp. $14.95
No pastime, not even baseball, has inspired more literature— and quotable words of wit and wisdom—than fishing. In The Quotable Fisherman, renowned fishing writer and editor Nick Lyons, former publisher of Lyons Press, has compiled more than 350 memorable quotes expressing the passion and pleasure of angling. The authors whom Lyons quotes run from the
venerable Izaak Walton (“…’tis not all of fishing to fish.”) to the irreverent Ed Zern (“Fishermen are born honest, but they get over it.”) and include several Montanans, such as Thomas McGuane (“Young anglers love new rivers the way they love the rest of their lives. Time doesn’t seem to be of the essence and somewhere in the system is what they are looking for.”) This book will entertain anyone who fishes and thinks about fishing. You can quote us on that. Inventing Montana: Dispatches from the Madison Valley Ted Leeson. Skyhorse Publishing, 256 pp. $24.95
Most books written about Montana are by native residents or immigrants who’ve put down roots here for good. Ted Leeson is neither. He lives and works in Corvalis, Oregon. Every summer for the past two decades, he and a group of close friends return to an old ranch house overlooking the Madison River and spend a month fishing, reading, and conversing, as well as marveling at the surrounding landscape. “What roots I have here, if they can be said to exist at all, run no deeper than those of a potted plant,” he writes in Inventing Montana. Yet from his perspective as a longtime visitor, Leeson sees Montana differently. Because his time here is so short, Leeson’s impressions and interpretations become more acute. To be sure, he admits, his experience here is limited and selective. “At the same time,” he
November–December fwp.mt.gov/mtoutdoors
adds, “while skimming the cream from a pail of fresh milk may not qualify you as an expert in dairy farming, the cream itself is perfectly authentic and your appreciation of it genuine. There is a version of knowing that comes with extreme loyalty.” Wildlife in American Art: Masterworks from the National Museum of Wildlife Art Adam Duncan Harris. University of Oklahoma Press, 287 pp. $35
Wildlife art often gets panned by critics as not being “artistic.” But anyone who has visited the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson, Wyoming, surely understands that wildlife painters and sculptors often transcend mere documentation to convey ideas and emotions about wild animals, natural history, wilderness, and the relationship between humans and the natural world. In other words: art. Wildlife in American Art includes more than 125 full-color illustrations that highlight the
entire range of the museum’s collection over two and a half centuries, up to modern interpretations of wildlife by Andy Warhol and Robert Kuhn. The book also examines the history of wildlife art in America in a series of essays by Adam Duncan Harris, the museum’s curator. He charts the tradition of depicting America’s fauna, which began as early as 2500 BC, with small bird sculptures made of native rock by Great Lakes region Indian tribes, and still thrives today. Theodore Roosevelt: HunterConservationist R. L. Wilson. Boone & Crockett Club, 295 pp. $39.95
Ken Burns’s documentary The National Parks on PBS last spring and Timothy Egan’s highly acclaimed book The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America have stirred public interest in the nation’s irrepressible 26th president. Theodore Roosevelt accomplished much during his remarkable life—writing more than a dozen books, surviving an assassination attempt, and winning the Nobel Peace Prize—but his greatest legacy is conservation. He played a significant role in creating 150 national forests, five national parks, and 18 national monuments, conserving 230 million acres across the United States. That conservation ethic, as detailed by R. L. Wilson in his richly illustrated biography Theodore Roosevelt: HunterConservationist, grew from Roos-
