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Leave It as It Is
- A Journey Through Theodore Roosevelt's American Wilderness
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 12 hrs and 24 mins
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Publisher's summary
Best-selling author David Gessner’s wilderness road trip inspired by America’s greatest conservationist, Theodore Roosevelt, is “a rallying cry in the age of climate change” (Robert Redford).
“Leave it as it is,” Theodore Roosevelt announced while viewing the Grand Canyon for the first time. “The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it.” Roosevelt’s pronouncement signaled the beginning of an environmental fight that still wages today. To reconnect with the American wilderness and with the president who courageously protected it, acclaimed nature writer and New York Times best-selling author David Gessner embarks on a great American road trip guided by Roosevelt’s crusading environmental legacy.
Gessner travels to the Dakota badlands where Roosevelt awakened as a naturalist; to Yellowstone, Yosemite, and the Grand Canyon where Roosevelt escaped during the grind of his reelection tour; and finally, to Bears Ears, Utah, a monument proposed by Native Tribes that is currently embroiled in a national conservation fight. Along the way, Gessner questions and reimagines Roosevelt’s vision for today’s lands.
“Insightful, observant, and wry,” (BookPage) Leave It As It Is offers an arresting history of Roosevelt’s pioneering conservationism, a powerful call to arms, and a profound meditation on our environmental future.
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As a boy, Robert D. Kaplan listened to his truck-driver father's evocative stories about traveling across America as a young man, travels in which he learned to understand the country from a ground-level perspective. In Earning the Rockies, Kaplan undertakes his own cross-country journey to recapture an appreciation and understanding of American geography that is often lost in the jet age.
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Magnificent book that found a great narrator!
- By BotakTree on 03-09-17
By: Robert D. Kaplan
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Beyond the Hundredth Meridian
- John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West
- By: Wallace Stegner
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 17 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Pulitzer Prize winner Wallace Stegner recounts the remarkable career of Major John Wesley Powell, the distinguished ethnologist and geologist who explored the Colorado River, the Grand Canyon, and the homeland of the Southwest Indian tribes. This classic work is a penetrating and insightful study of the Powell’s career, from the beginning of the Powell Survey, in which Powell and his men famously became the first to descend the Colorado River, to his eventual expulsion from the Geological Survey.
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History repeats itself.
- By Roy on 09-12-11
By: Wallace Stegner
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In the Valleys of the Noble Beyond
- In Search of the Sasquatch
- By: John Zada
- Narrated by: Pete Cross
- Length: 8 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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On the central and north coast of British Columbia, the Great Bear Rainforest is the largest intact temperate rainforest in the world, containing more organic matter than any other terrestrial ecosystem on the planet. The area plays host to a wide range of species, from thousand-year-old western cedars to humpback whales to iconic white Spirit bears. According to local residents, another giant is said to live in these woods.
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Not a relatable book
- By RJK on 07-14-19
By: John Zada
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The Inconvenient Indian
- A Curious Account of Native People in North America
- By: Thomas King
- Narrated by: Lorne Cardinal
- Length: 9 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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The Inconvenient Indian is at once a “history” and the complete subversion of a history - in short, a critical and personal meditation that the remarkable Thomas King has conducted over the past 50 years about what it means to be “Indian” in North America. Rich with dark and light, pain and magic, this book distills the insights gleaned from that meditation, weaving the curiously circular tale of the relationship between non-Natives and Natives in the centuries since the two first encountered each other.
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I Thought I'd Enjoy This More
- By Kristy Grainger on 08-11-18
By: Thomas King
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American Serengeti
- The Last Big Animals of the Great Plains
- By: Dan Flores
- Narrated by: Michael Kramer
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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America's Great Plains once possessed one of the grandest wildlife spectacles of the world, equaled only by such places as the Serengeti, the Masai Mara, or the veld of South Africa. Pronghorn antelope, gray wolves, bison, coyotes, wild horses, and grizzly bears: less than 200 years ago these creatures existed in such abundance that John James Audubon was moved to write "it is impossible to describe or even conceive the vast multitudes of these animals".
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Could have been great, but
- By An Amazon Buyer on 08-29-18
By: Dan Flores
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The Hopi Survival Kit
- The Prophecies, Instructions and Warnings Revealed by the Last Elders
- By: Thomas E. Mails
- Narrated by: Kaipo Schwab
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Renowned Native American expert Thomas Mails was chosen by the last surviving elders to reveal to the outside world the sacred Hopi prophecy and instructions at precisely the time in history when they are most urgently needed. The Hopi Survival Kit is the first full revelation of traditional Hopi prophecy. Many of its predictions have already been realized, but the most shattering apocalyptic events are still to occur. And though this may be a sobering realization, it is also our best defense.
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A wealth of information
- By Larry Benoit on 03-10-21
By: Thomas E. Mails
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King and Queen of Malibu
- The True Story of the Battle for Paradise
- By: David K. Randall
- Narrated by: Eric Summerer
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Over a half century, Malibu went from an untamed ranch in the middle of nowhere to a paradise seeded with movie stars. Behind its transformation is the love story of Frederick and May Rindge. He was a Harvard-trained confidant of presidents; she grew up on a hardscrabble Midwestern farm; yet their unlikely bond would shape history.
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Detailed and interesting
- By SuperLuckyCat on 08-04-24
By: David K. Randall
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The End of Night
- Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light
- By: Paul Bogard
- Narrated by: Paul Bogard
- Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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A deeply panoramic tour of the night, from its brightest spots to the darkest skies we have left. A starry night is one of nature's most magical wonders. Yet in our artificially lit world, three-quarters of Americans' eyes never switch to night vision and most of us no longer experience true darkness. In The End of Night, Paul Bogard restores our awareness of the spectacularly primal, wildly dark night sky and how it has influenced the human experience across everything from science to art.
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A little too poetic for my taste
- By Dan B on 03-18-19
By: Paul Bogard
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Forty Signs of Rain
- Science in the Capital, Book 1
- By: Kim Stanley Robinson
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim, Kim Stanley Robinson
- Length: 12 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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The best-selling author of the classic Mars trilogy and The Years of Rice and Salt returns with a riveting new trilogy of cutting-edge science, international politics, and the real-life ramifications of global warming as they are played out in our nation's capital - and in the daily lives of those at the center of the action. Hauntingly realistic, here is a novel of the near future that is inspired by scientific facts already making headlines. BONUS AUDIO: Includes an exclusive introduction by author Kim Stanley Robinson.
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Its all
- By steve on 01-07-09
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Last Stand
- George Bird Grinnell, the Battle to Save the Buffalo, and the Birth of the New West
- By: Michael Punke
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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In the last three decades of the 19th century, an American buffalo herd once numbering 30 million animals was reduced to 23. It was the era of Manifest Destiny, a gilded age that viewed the West as nothing more than a treasure chest of resources to be dug up or shot down. Supporting hide hunters was the US Army, which considered the eradication of the buffalo essential to victory in its ongoing war on Native Americans.
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Depressing history of American tragedy
- By J. A. Bowen on 05-16-16
By: Michael Punke
What listeners say about Leave It as It Is
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- penguin
- 11-12-20
Decent book
All in all it’s a pretty interesting book on Roosevelt and how a lot of public land came to be. The only parts I didn’t care for is when the author stopped being objective and let his personal feelings on the Trump administration come out and he would go on rants. The readers voice is boring and robotic.
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- Mary
- 06-15-21
Needs editing
Great material but an editor really needed to get in there and slash repetition, minimize some of the unrelated material. Still good info but hard to keep listening
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- Daniel
- 11-11-20
Thought provoking
To be fair: it's not really a book about Teddy Roosevelt. It's a very relevant story about the current state of dealing with public lands. Very thought provoking although I could do without the profanaties. Very engaging and eye opening.
Great narrator as well!
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1 person found this helpful
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- SUSAN
- 02-25-21
Boring
The author fails to make the story engaging. Roosevelt is an interesting figure, and public lands are an emotional and important topic. Somehow the book makes them dull.
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- Robin M.
- 03-05-21
The title of the book should be changed
A more fitting title to this book would be Trump's Reduction of Bears Ears and some stuff about Theodore Roosevelt. The author spends a lot of time talking about the reductions to Bears Ears and the negative things that Trump has done. When he isn't talking about that he faults Roosevelt for having the normal views that most people has in the early 1900's when it comes to race, gender, and the American culture. If you're looking for a book about Roosevelt and his life don't listen to this one. The only positive thing about the book is that I could listen to it in a day.
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- Glenn R. Nelson
- 11-20-21
Ugh, Not at All What I'd Hoped For
Gessner writes that his nephew Noah grew tired of all the Teddy Roosevelt talk and study. By the end of this book, if you make it there, you'll know exactly how he felt. I thought this would be about the places that Roosevelt took a shine to -- and their issues. Instead, this is an often tone deaf and infuriatingly sycophantic account of "T.R." Even when Gessner finds some interesting terrain to explore, he cuts short the discussion to bleat on about Roosevelt's brilliance. Gessner believes he is illustrating some of Roosevelt's "complications," but those passages come off as apologetic.
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