{"product_id":"a-love-affair-with-birds-the-life-of-thomas-sadler-roberts-0884470547711","title":"A Love Affair with Birds: The Life of Thomas Sadler Roberts","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA Love Affair with Birds: The Life of Thomas Sadler Roberts\u003c\/strong\u003e by Leaf, Sue. hardcover edition. ISBN: 0884470547711.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe father of Minnesota ornithology, whose life story opens a window on a lost world of nature and conservation in the state’s early days\n\nImagine a Minneapolis so small that, on calm days, the roar of St. Anthony Falls could be heard in town, a time when passenger pigeons roosted in neighborhood oak trees. Now picture a dapper professor conducting his ornithology class (the university’s first) by streetcar to Lake Harriet for a morning of bird-watching. The students were mostly young women—in sunhats, sailor tops, and long skirts, with binoculars strung around their necks. The professor was Thomas Sadler Roberts (1858–1946), a doctor for three decades, a bird lover virtually from birth, the father of Minnesota ornithology, and the man who, perhaps more than any other, promoted the study of the state’s natural history. A Love Affair with Birds is the first full biography of this key figure in Minnesota’s past.\nRoberts came to Minnesota as a boy and began keeping detailed accounts of Minneapolis’s birds. These journals, which became the basis for his landmark work The Birds of Minnesota, also inform this book, affording a view of the state’s rich avian life in its early days—and of a young man whose passion for birds and practice of medicine in a young Minneapolis eventually dovetailed in his launching of the beloved Bell Museum of Natural History.\nBird enthusiast, doctor, author, curator, educator, conservationist: every chapter in Roberts’s life is also a chapter in the state’s history, and in his story acclaimed author Sue Leaf—an avid bird enthusiast and nature lover herself—captures a true Minnesota character and his time.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"University of Minnesota Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44985137889333,"sku":"ByrdShop_0816675643","price":31.98,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780816675647_f23623bd-724a-4f75-b84a-a9b08892586d.jpg?v=1778635442","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/a-love-affair-with-birds-the-life-of-thomas-sadler-roberts-0884470547711","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}