This book covers different regions and seasons, and features not only birds but fish, marine mammals etc in this beautiful illustrated anthology of art and words.
The text is so detailed. as we explore hunting and fishing etc observations through Audubon's sea adventures. Audubon’s warnings about the fragility of birdlife in his time are prescient and newly relevant.
It's a comprehensive collection and fascinating tribute.

DNF - I couldn't get into this book & might try again at a later date but, it's just not for me at this time.

John Audubon was a master of observing the natural world and birds in particular. The world no longer looks like this and in many ways, this is the only way to experience this world. Luckily we still can experience it through teh genius of John James Audobon.

Excerpt from a longer article:

Timely Take-aways for Life-Long Learning: Birds and Birders

Several new and upcoming books explore the world of birds and birders. From naturalists and scientists to backyard birders, these books explore the wide range of ways people connect with birds.

...

Audubon at Sea
Edited by Christoph Irmscher & Richard J. King, 2022, University of Chicago Press
Themes: Nature, Birds

Weaving together Audubon’s writings and artwork, the editors explore this famous artist and naturalist’s connect with the sea and waterbirds.

Take-aways: Explore this book for examples of the challenges educators and students face in addressing the legacy of naturalists such as Audubon who killed for his art.

...

Whether helping educators keep up-to-date in their subject-areas, promoting student reading in the content-areas, or simply encouraging nonfiction leisure reading, teacher librarians need to be aware of the best new titles across the curriculum and how to activate life-long learning. - Annette Lamb

I love reading about natural history and the people who document it so a book about John James Audubon? Here for it. While this book definitely has an academic lean, the authors do a great job of presenting Audubon's contributions and also his flaws and missteps. Part biography, part history of natural science, Audubon at Sea is a fantastic read for anyone interested in travel, adventure, animals, history, and ornithology.

** Thanks so much to NetGalley, Christoph Irmscher, and University of Chicago Press for this ARC. Audobon at Sea: The Coastal and Transatlantic Adventures of John James Audubon is out now! **

This was an incredibly hard book to rate. I actually finished it on September 1st and am just now writing a review on the 4th. To be completely honest, I hated this book. With that being said, it was kind of my fault. I knew almost nothing about Audubon before picking this up, and most of the book is Audubon's own writing. It turns out that Audubon is the kind of naturalist who spends A LOT of time killing birds. Unfortunately, much of his writing was about said killing of birds. Between this and his musings on the indigenous people he encountered in his travels, I found it difficult to get through this. For enjoyment alone, this should be a one star read. With that being said, the editors of this book are not responsible for how dislikable Audubon is. I enjoyed their commentary and reflections on the writing of Audubon's included here and was always relieved to get to a section written by the editor.

I'm settling on two stars here - and I'm not even sure that's the right rating. Enjoyment - this was a 1 star read. The quality of this book was much higher - well researched, thoughtful, and reflective. Unfortunately, the dread I felt about having to read it keeps me from rating it any higher.

If you like Audubon - go for it. If you don't, or are going in blind like I am, do not expect something in the style of Mary Oliver or Robert MacFarlane.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This is a very in-depth deep dive into Audubon’s thoughts and actions while at sea collecting bird specimens for his famous book. There are a ton of excerpts from his journals and background into his life. This is definitely academic in nature and not a read for a casual Audubon fan. His journal entries were purposefully unedited to read exactly as he wrote them which was sometimes confusing as English was not his first language (at least, it wasn’t his only language) and he did not always have the best grasp of grammar, spelling, and punctuation. The authors did this to let the reader into Audubon’s actual recorded thoughts. It was clearly well-researched and written to be consumed by a layperson who is interested in Audubon’s life.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of Audubon at Sea. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you to Netgalley and the University of Chicago Press for providing an ARC to review.

This book was truly fascinating with a wide range of topics. I found the intro by the writers and the actual words written in Audobon's diaries to be seamless in tone. The way Audobon went about studying nature was, at times, overwhelming. It was shocking to hear how people killed the animals, fish, and birds with so little thought to preservation. I would use a trigger warning with this book. If you are sensitive to animal cruelty, this book might be upsetting. In an academic sense, it was fascinating. But from the viewpoint of treating all living things with respect, historical researchers missed the mark...by a lot.

For the academic shelf, but certainly readable by all, this book aims to direct our attention to the fact that Audubon's nautical world is less well considered than his land-locked ornithology. Audubon was practically the best bird illustrator of his time, using the world's best engraver of the subject to get his imagery to some of the largest practical pages one could wish for. But his magnum opus, "The Birds of America" has so much in it, and yet so few waterbirds – despite the creator being quite a routine, if quite a routinely ill, sailor.

There's clearly a case to be said that Audubon did a disservice to seabirds, which has equally led to what he did do as regards them being swept under the academic rug a little. If he was such a determined scientist, often seeing birds glibly ignoring storms at sea, surely it's a case of "because of" not "despite" his seasickness that he should wish to concentrate on them the more, due to their alien natures and supreme abilities? Either way, what he did is what we have, starting with his personal notes from his first voyage as a working scientist sailing from the US to Liverpool. These are as scrappy and hard to parse as they ever were, with awkward use of language, but as they started out as 'what we would have talked about had you been there' messages to his wife, and gradually became firmer nature notes, that's forgivable. The next chunk is such extracts as are relevant from his "Ornithological Biography" volumes – those essays and descriptive sections that relate to sea life.

What the book cannot do is shy away from one issue the man and his science has to this day, in that a lot of his work – and a lot of the on-ship life – seems to have involved catching, slaughtering and gutting the critters concerned. So these initial essays launch with catching "dolphins" (even if they're not strictly dolphins at all). Of course, fishermen and scientists were a lot more keen to get the killing done back then, but it's going to be an issue for some people reading this now to have it first-hand – and eventually, with later style changes from Audubon's pen, in the second person.

The final section does what the rest has done, but less well, not fully coming from Audubon's hand. Where before we've had wonderfully presented sections of Audubon, with excellent notes from our current editors and fine glimpses into the sketchbooks and less polished artworks, this is a previous cobbling-together from copies, rewrites, later edits and hatchet jobs alike, the original journals of the voyage having been lost. Either way, it's a more polished author by now – if once again the end to life featured is less than delightful.

Coming to this as a non-specialist, albeit one who was admiring his art in London's Natural History Museum less than a month prior to this review, I saw nothing to dissuade the academic here. The editors go to great lengths to edify, correct, re-identify and so on, while allowing the majority of the pages to be Audubon's writings. Having the OB heavily redacted to all that remains relevant to the volume at hand won't serve all scholars, but this way of reappraising Audubon certainly seemed to work for me. And as a newcomer to his life story, it provided interesting basic background – I knew nothing of his slightly dubious parentage and slave-owning heritage, nor even reliance on British producers to get his works to the public. I doubt the average commuter reader will relish all of this, but it remains thoroughly readable, and very accessible, while the book's academic intent is completely met. On those grounds, as opposed to those of reading for pleasure, this deserves the full five stars.

Audubon at Sea: The Coastal and Transatlantic Adventures of John James Audubon by Edited by Richard J. King and Christoph Irmscher is a wonderful nonfiction that takes the life and times of James Audubon during his sea travels and adventures, and brings those observations to one and all.

This is such a wonderful book that is part biography, part nature writing, and part nonfiction/historical account and wraps it all up into an impressive collection of thoughts, observations, events, writings, images, and moments of inspiration to its readers.

The authors have clearly done their research and present a beautiful collection of Audubon’s writings, musings, reflections, images, drawings, inspirations, and the events associated with all the above in regards specifically to his many sea voyages. It was fascinating to see and imagine what he witnessed, felt, and heard. The annotations are informative, the images, plates, maps, and drawings included are stunning.

It was wonderful to get these glimpses of the past, not only of a lost time of life and nature, but also into this fascinating and yet deeply flawed man that we associate with birds today. Is he perfect? Oh definitely not, but we can acknowledge those shortcomings while appreciating what he was able to give and add to the world.

A beautiful book.

5/5 stars

Thank you NG and University of Chicago Press for this wonderful arc and in return I am submitting my unbiased and voluntary review and opinion.

I am posting this review to my GR and Bookbub accounts immediately and will post it to my Amazon, Instagram, and B&N accounts upon publication on 5/26/22.