Birds were "the objects of my greatest delight," wrote John James Audubon (1785-1851), founder of modern ornithology and one of the world's greatest bird painters. His masterpiece, The Birds of America, depicts almost five hundred North American bird species, each life-size image rendered in vibrant color. Audubon was also an explorer, a woodsman, a hunter, an entertaining and prolific writer, and an energetic self-promoter. Through talent and dogged...