Thomas McNamee

I was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and grew up there and in New York City. I studied writing at Yale under the tutelage of Robert Penn Warren. I am the author of The Grizzly Bear (1984); Nature First: Keeping Our Wild Places and Wild Creatures Wild (1987); A Story of Deep Delight (1990); The Return of the Wolf to Yellowstone (1997), Alice Waters and Chez Panisse: The Romantic, Impractical, Often Eccentric, Ultimately Brilliant Making of a Food Revolution 2007), The Man Who Changed the Way We Eat: Craig Claiborne and the American Food Renaissance (2012), The Killing of Wolf Number Ten (2014), and, my latest, THE INNER LIFE OF CATS: THE SCIENCE AND SECRETS OF OUR MYSTERIOUS FELINE COMPANIONS (2017). My essays, poems, and natural history writing have been published in Audubon, The New Yorker, Life, Natural History, High Country News, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Saveur, and a number of literary journals. I wrote the documentary film Alexander Calder, which was broadcast on the PBS 'American Masters' series and received both a George W. Peabody Award and an Emmy. Many of my book reviews have appeared The New York Times Book Review. After twenty-three years in New York City and five in rural Montana, I have lived in San Francisco since 1998--albeit with frequent returns to New York and as much of every summer as possible in Montana.