{"product_id":"true-nature-isbn-9781524748319","title":"True Nature","description":"\u003cb\u003eNAMED A NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR BY \u003ci\u003eTHE WASHINGTON POST \u003c\/i\u003e• A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY \u003ci\u003eTHE NEW YORKER \u003c\/i\u003eAND\u003ci\u003e VOGUE • \u003c\/i\u003eThe first biography of Peter Matthiessen, the novelist, naturalist, and Zen roshi, whose trailblazing work championed Native American rights and helped usher in the modern environmental movement, by award-winning writer Lance Richardson.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“A stunning, formidable achievement by a brilliant biographer. Lance Richardson takes his readers on a wild ride with Peter Matthiessen.” —Kai Bird, Pulitzer Prize-winning co-author of \u003ci\u003eAmerican Prometheus\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“A fair-minded, grippingly paced, and tremendously readable narrative.” \u003ci\u003e—\u003c\/i\u003ePico Iyer,\u003ci\u003e \u003ci\u003eAir Mail\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePeter Matthiessen (1927-2014), a towering figure of twentieth-century American letters, achieved so much during his lifetime, in so many different areas, that people have struggled to pin him down. While ambivalent about his WASP privilege—as a teenager he demanded that his name be removed from the New York \u003ci\u003eSocial Register\u003c\/i\u003e—he attended Yale and cut his teeth in postwar Paris, co-founding \u003ci\u003eThe Paris Review \u003c\/i\u003eas he worked undercover for the CIA. But then, after a rebellious stint as a Long Island fisherman, he escaped into a series of wild expeditions: floating through the Amazon to recover a prehistorical fossil; embedding with a tribe in Netherlands New Guinea; swimming with sharks off the coast of Australia. His novels, inspired by his travels, were unclassifiable meditations about Caymanian turtle hunters and frontier outlaws in the Florida Everglades. Meanwhile, his nonfiction became legendary: nature books like \u003ci\u003eWildlife in America\u003c\/i\u003e—“key parts of the canon of emergent environmental writing,” says Bill McKibben—as well as advocacy journalism supporting Cesar Chavez, Leonard Peltier, and Native American land claims.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eUnderlying all Matthiessen’s disparate pursuits was the same existential search—to find a cure for “deep restlessness.” This search was most profoundly articulated in \u003ci\u003eThe Snow Leopard\u003c\/i\u003e, his famous account of a 250-mile wildlife survey across the Himalayas. In \u003ci\u003eTrue Nature\u003c\/i\u003e, Lance Richardson reconstructs the full scope of a spiritual quest that ultimately led Matthiessen, even as he inflicted great pain on his family, to the highest ranks of Zen. Drawing on rich primary sources and hundreds of interviews, Richardson depicts Matthiessen’s life with page-turning immediacy, while also illuminating how the writer’s uncanny gifts enabled him to sense connections between ecological decline, racism, and labor exploitation—to express, eloquently and presciently, that “in a damaged human habitat, all problems merge.”\u003cb\u003eOne of \u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal\u003c\/i\u003e’s Most Anticipated Fall Books\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eOne of the \u003ci\u003eWashington Post\u003c\/i\u003e’s Anticipated Fall Books\u003cbr\u003eOne of \u003ci\u003eGarden \u0026amp; Gun\u003c\/i\u003e’s Fall Reading List and  Favorite Books of 2025\u003cbr\u003eOne of \u003ci\u003eAlta Journal\u003c\/i\u003e’s Most Anticipated Autumn Book Releases\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“If a cat has 9 lives, Matthiessen seemed to have 29. . . . Lance Richardson . . . tracks his elusive prey along every uneven path with heroic thoroughness. . . . A fair-minded, grippingly paced, and tremendously readable narrative.” \u003cb\u003e—Pico Iyer, \u003ci\u003eAir Mail\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e​\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Matthiessen’s many masks are on display in \u003ci\u003eTrue Nature\u003c\/i\u003e, a deeply researched and artfully executed biography. . . . Mr. Richardon’s explication of [his subject’s] sui generis novels is astute and highly welcome. . . . Readers will leave \u003ci\u003eTrue Nature\u003c\/i\u003e with an enriched appreciation for Matthiessen.” \u003cb\u003e—Sam Sacks, \u003ci\u003eWall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Beautifully written, insightful, and engaging, \u003ci\u003eTrue Nature\u003c\/i\u003e is a tour de force depiction of a charismatic, restless, self-absorbed, immensely talented literary lion.” \u003cb\u003e—Glenn C. Altschuler, \u003ci\u003ePittsburgh Post-Gazette\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Elegant and rigorous. . . . Restlessness is deeply rooted in American mythology. . . . Few have embodied this supposedly American quality with more complexity than the writer Peter Matthiessen. And few have captured it with more clarity than Lance Richardson.” \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—\u003c\/i\u003eJohn Kaag,\u003ci\u003e The Atlantic\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A magnificent literary biography, painstakingly researched, intricately organized, and beautifully written, fully worthy of its sensitive, restless, and driven subject. . . . It should be of interest to anyone drawn to the search for our true nature and the deepest truths of the human heart.” \u003cb\u003e—David Guy, \u003ci\u003eTricycle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eTrue Nature\u003c\/i\u003e is enthralling, expertly told, and based on extraordinary research.” \u003cb\u003e—Michael O'Donnell, \u003ci\u003eAmerican Scholar\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Top-notch: sensitive, probing, admiring but never fawning, and exhaustively researched.” \u003cb\u003e— Jonathan Miles, \u003ci\u003eGarden \u0026amp; Gun\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Richardson’s fine-toothed research establishes Peter’s importance as a writer and a singular inhabitant of his time. That is the strength of a great biography—which \u003ci\u003eTrue Nature\u003c\/i\u003e is, illuminating Peter as an interpreter and translator of all things human as well as a defender of the natural world and everything in it.” \u003cb\u003e—Terry McDonell, \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eAlta\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I loved Lance Richardson’s \u003ci\u003eTrue Nature,\u003c\/i\u003e perhaps all the more because I was getting to know both Matthiessen and his writing from this terrifically absorbing chronicle. . . . A biographer aims both to attract new readers and to satisfy hardcore fans, a near-impossible feat that Richardson deftly achieves.” \u003cb\u003e—Megan Marshall, Lit Hub\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Richardson is an accomplished storyteller. . . . \u003ci\u003eTrue Nature\u003c\/i\u003e is beautifully written, generous, but also uncompromising, and Richardson handles the complexities with insight and grace. One of the pleasures . . . is that [this] is also a book about the craft of writing [and] the solitary writer’s search for \u003ci\u003ele mot juste\u003c\/i\u003e.” \u003cb\u003e—Scott Chaskey\u003ci\u003e, The East Hampton Star\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“This is a brilliant biography, bristling with ground-clearing primary-source research, filled with every findable fact about this writer, and, in an added twist as rare as it’s welcome, written with serious narrative flair.” \u003cb\u003e—Steve Donoghue, \u003ci\u003eOpen Letters Review\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Impressive . . . A rigorous and balanced account of this restless soul. . . . Richardson shows how Matthiessen’s devotion to writing never wavered. In the process, he reveals the many sides (to quote Matthiessen’s own editor) of ‘an immensely complicated, neurotic, charming, iron-willed, uncertain, demanding author.’” \u003cb\u003e—Guy Stagg, \u003ci\u003eThe Spectator\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e​​\u003cbr\u003e“Capacious . . . Richardson’s carefully cross-hatched study of his subject depicts him in the wild, in all habitats and seasons. . . . A very considerable American life.” \u003cb\u003e—Stephen Smith, \u003ci\u003eFinancial Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A comprehensive, compelling life of a man of many parts.” \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The first biography of the writer, and an engaging one at that . . . grounded in remarkably candid interviews with Matthiessen’s family members and lovers.” \u003cb\u003e—Maggie Doherty, \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Richardson writes movingly of the melding of ecology and divinity in Matthiessen’s literary work, and of his years of activism. The result is a touching, unsparing, and fully rendered portrait of a complex figure of 20th-century literature.” \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e (starred review)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eTrue Nature\u003c\/i\u003e is a magnificent achievement: an immense work of scholarship, synthesis and empathy, written throughout with verve and lucidity, which illuminates one of the most fascinating writerly lives of the past century.”\u003cb\u003e —Robert Macfarlane, bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eUnderland\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eIs a River Alive?\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Naturalist, novelist, Yeti-hunter, CIA agent—Peter Matthiessen led an exceptional life, and Lance Richardson does a wonderful job capturing it in all its complexity. \u003ci\u003eTrue Nature \u003c\/i\u003eis generous and sensitive, but at the same time clear-eyed about its outsized subject.” \u003cb\u003e—Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of \u003ci\u003eThe Sixth Extinction\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A riveting account of the tumultuous, untamed, yet determinedly focused life of Peter Matthiessen, a writer of planetary greatness. A superb nature writer, an uncompromising social and environmental activist, a devotee of Zen’s endless path toward transformation, and by all accounts a failure as a proper family man, Matthiessen has been gifted with an excellent biographer in Lance Richardson, whose \u003ci\u003eTrue Nature\u003c\/i\u003e approaches this life with a Zen-like quality of calm, gratitude, and expansiveness all its own.” \u003cb\u003e—Joy Williams, winner of the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e“True Nature\u003c\/i\u003e is a stunning, formidable achievement by a brilliant biographer. Lance Richardson takes his readers on a wild ride with Peter Matthiessen—portraying the man in all his maddening complexities. And what a journey: founding \u003ci\u003eThe Paris Review\u003c\/i\u003e, working undercover for the CIA, Zen master, chasing the snow leopard in the Himalayas. This intimate and gracefully written biography is absolutely enthralling.” \u003cb\u003e—Kai Bird, Pulitzer Prize-winning co-author of \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eAmerican Prometheus\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Lance Richardson brilliantly captures Peter Matthiessen’s 'pathological restlessness' in this taut, propulsive, and riveting tale of a legendary life. We are with Matthiessen as he co-founds \u003ci\u003eThe Paris Review \u003c\/i\u003ein postwar Europe, joins and leaves the CIA, explores the Amazon, treks through the Himalayas, and becomes a Zen master—all while writing the books that would help launch the environmental movement. Drawing on Matthiessen’s private papers and hundreds of interviews, Richardson creates an extraordinary portrait of an elusive writer who sought to protect the world’s last wild places. There is adventure, beauty, compassion, and deep insight on nearly every page. Compellingly crafted, doggedly researched, and elegantly written, \u003ci\u003eTrue Nature\u003c\/i\u003e is a true masterpiece of literary biography.” \u003cb\u003e—Heather Clark, author of \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e Top Ten\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Brooding, sexy, troubled Peter Matthiessen, one of America's last great WASP renegades, has had the immense posthumous luck of finding an ideal biographer in Lance Richardson, who patiently and artfully dissects a difficult life and a body of work that evades easy description. Matthiessen emerges from this book as an unexpected radical, an underappreciated Modernist, and a pioneering environmentalist. I can't imagine that a fairer, better researched, more elegant biography will come out this year.” \u003cb\u003e—Benjamin Moser, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of \u003ci\u003eSontag\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“Comprehensive, deeply researched and lucidly written, this is the definitive biography of a complicated, fascinating and sometimes exasperating man.” \u003cb\u003e—Adam Sisman, author of \u003ci\u003eJohn le Carre\u003c\/i\u003e: \u003ci\u003eThe Biography\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“Peter Matthiessen was a restless seeker after the secrets of the universe—in nature, in psychedelic drugs, in Zen. And he kept many secrets of his own—\u003ci\u003eParis Review \u003c\/i\u003ecolleagues didn’t know he worked for the CIA; wives didn’t know how many lovers he had. Haunted by privilege, he seemed most comfortable where he least fit in, exhilarated by friction and difficulty, often created by his own Melvillean appetites. In his writing, he could make contradictions cohere and even bend reality to his tenacious gift. Lance Richardson, likewise, shapes the story of this wounded, angry, charismatic man into an irresistible portrait, alive with twentieth-century counterculture ideals that burned with hope and then burned out. Some of Matthiessen’s books read like an elegy to the planet, and this biography reads like an elegy to the last of the cool WASP men. It’s quite a story.” \u003cb\u003e—Katherine Bucknell, author of \u003ci\u003eChristopher Isherwood Inside Out\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A nuanced account of the brilliant, driven, complicated man who gave us \u003ci\u003eThe Snow Leopard\u003c\/i\u003e. Peter Matthiessen was always seeking something bigger, something more profound. And this wonderful biography echoes that ambition and questing spirit. Perceptive and consistently readable.” \u003cb\u003e—Cal Flyn, international bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eIslands of Abandonment\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eLANCE RICHARDSON’s first book, \u003ci\u003eHouse of Nutter\u003c\/i\u003e:\u003ci\u003e The Rebel Tailor of Savile Row\u003c\/i\u003e, was a \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e Editors’ Choice and named one of the notable titles of 2018 by \u003ci\u003eThe Sunday Times\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Mail on Sunday\u003c\/i\u003e,\u003ci\u003e Esquire,\u003c\/i\u003e and the American Library Association. He has been awarded numerous fellowships, including a year-long residency at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, at the New York Public Library. He teaches in the MFA in Writing program at Bennington College, Vermont.","brand":"Pantheon","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48233800499429,"sku":"NP9781524748319","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781524748319.jpg?v=1767742995","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/true-nature-isbn-9781524748319","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}