One of Abbeville's most spectacular achievements, representing the highest standards in fine art printing, now available at a more economical price. This marvelous edition of Audubon's Birds of Americas displays all 435 of Audubon's brilliant handcolored engravings in exquisite reproductions taken from the original plates of the Audubon Society's archival copy of the rare Double Elephant Folio. Although many attempts have been made to re-create the magnificient illustrations in Audubon's masterpiece, nothing equals the level of fidelity or scale achieved in this high-quality edition. Completely reorganized and annotated by Roger Tory Peterson, who was American's best known ornithologist, and issued with the full endorsement and cooperation of the Audubon Society, this volume is the first--in more than a century and a half since its publication--to rearrange the plates in a more scientific order. Peterson's fascinating introduction places Audubon in the context of the history of American ornithological art and also reproduces a wide sampling of the work of Audubon's notable predecessors and disciples, including Peterson's own justly famous paintings. This new systematic arrangement of the prints--complete with thorough, informative commentaries about each bird--not only makes the Birds of America more accessible than ever before, but made it possible to correct many of the problems or errors in Audubon's original edition that later scholarship revealed.