Grinnell, America's Environmental Pioneer and His Restless Drive to Save the West

Drawing on forty thousand pages of George Bird Grinnell’s correspondence and dozens of his diaries, author John Taliaferro reveals a man whose deeds and high-mindedness earned him a lustrous peerage, from presidents to chiefs, Audubon to Aldo Leopold, John Muir to Gifford Pinchot, Edward S. Curtis to Edward H. Harriman. Throughout his long life, Grinnell was bound by family and sustained by intimate friendships, toggling between the East and the West. As Taliaferro’s enthralling portrait demonstrates, it was this tension that wound Grinnell’s nearly inexhaustible spring and honed his vision―a vision that still guides the imperiled future of our national treasures. George Bird Grinnell participated in the naming of many features in Glacier National Park. He was influential in establishing Glacier as a National Park in 1910.

606 pages, hardcover
16 pages of black and white illustrations

This was the January 28, 2026 Glacier National Park Conservancy Book Club selection. Watch the Zoom book club discussion with author John Taliaferro here.