Called the father of American descriptive ornithology, Charles-Lucien was the author of the monumental American Ornithology. Based extensively on archival sources, including many unpublished letters still in the possession of the Bonaparte family, The Emperor of Nature is the first biography ever written of Charles-Lucien Bonaparte.
Patricia Tyson Stroud is an independent scholar who lives in Pennsylvania. She is the author of Thomas Say, New World Naturalist and The Man Who Had Been King: The American Exile of Napoleon's Brother Joseph, also published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. She is former editor of Frontiers, the annual publication of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.
Extensively researched, detailed, and skillfully written.-Library Journal "Patricia Tyson Stroud deserves the highest commendation for this superb biography. She has dug deeply into a virtual treasure trove of European and American archival sources... She has unearthed numerous illustrations of people and places. She details the exceedingly complicated relationships, intrigues, and political machinations within this royal family... This book will be of interest to all ornithologists with a historical bent, and to anyone interested in royalty in general or the Bonaparte family in particular. "-Canadian Field-Naturalist "Stroud captures the life of an important, but virtually unknown, contributor to American ornithology...captures the man's accomplishments, frustrations, and idiosyncrasies clearly and objectively."-Choice