True Nature

A fascinating biography of a writer whose story aches to be told

KATHERINE MAY, author of Wintering

I can't imagine that a fairer, better researched, more elegant biography will come out this year

BENJAMIN MOSER, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Sontag

There is adventure, beauty, compassion, and deep insight on nearly every page. Compellingly crafted, doggedly researched, and elegantly written, True Nature is a true masterpiece of literary biography

HEATHER CLARK, Pulitzer Prize finalist for Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath

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. True Nature is generous and sensitive, but at the same time clear-eyed about its outsized subject

ELIZABETH KOLBERT, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction

Comprehensive, deeply researched and lucidly written, this is the definitive biography of a complicated, fascinating and sometimes exasperating man

ADAM SISMAN, author of The Secret Life of John Le Carre

An irresistible portrait... 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

KATHERINE BUCKNELL, author of Christopher Isherwood Inside Out

True Nature 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

ROBERT MACFARLANE

A remarkable achievement... Perceptive and consistently readable

CAL FLYN, author of Islands of Abandonment

A comprehensive, compelling life of a man of many parts

Kirkus

Lance Richardson... tracks his elusive prey along every uneven path with heroic thoroughness... [A] fair-minded, grippingly paced, and tremendously readable narrative

Pico Iyer, Air Mail

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 True Nature is

Alta

The first biography of the writer, and an engaging one at that, the book narrates how a child of privilege evolved into an esteemed naturalist-writer and a crusader for various left-wing causes... grounded in remarkably candid interviews with Matthiessen’s family members and lovers

The New Yorker

Richardson portrays the peripatetic life of Matthiessen—a celebrated author, magazine editor, and undercover agent who died in 2014—not as an eclectic series of adventures but as a single, 86-year spiritual quest... [An] elegant and rigorous biography

The Atlantic

Accomplished... In Richardson’s account there are many Matthiessens and they all get their due

Financial Times

Impressive... a rigorous and balanced account of this restless soul

Spectator