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