author
Madison Grant
1865–1937
A leading figure in early American conservation, he also became one of the most influential promoters of eugenics and racist immigration ideas in the United States. His legacy is deeply controversial because his writing helped shape both wildlife protection efforts and harmful pseudoscientific racial theories.
3 Audiobooks
The Conquest of a Continent; or, The Expansion of Races in America
by Madison Grant
The Rocky Mountain Goat
by Madison Grant
About the author
Born in New York City in 1865, Madison Grant trained as a lawyer but became better known as a writer, naturalist, and public advocate. He was active in major conservation circles of his time and is often linked to efforts to protect species such as the American bison and to support redwood preservation.
Grant is also remembered for a far darker side of his career. In The Passing of the Great Race (1916), he argued for a racial hierarchy centered on so-called Nordic superiority, ideas now widely recognized as scientific racism. His work fed into the eugenics movement and supported immigration restriction in the United States.
Because of those two sides of his public life, Grant is now discussed as a complicated and troubling historical figure: important in the history of conservation, but also a major voice for racist and exclusionary theories that caused real harm.