New book from UNCW’s David Gessner follows in footsteps of Teddy Roosevelt

Teddy Roosevelt has been back in the news again. The 26th president is having his equestrian statue -- the one immortalized in the "Night at the Museum" movies -- removed from outside the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Protesters objected to the pedestrian figures of a Native American and a Black man following Roosevelt on foot, and their implications of racism and colonialism.

But there's another TR, too: the outdoorsman and environmentalist who expanded the nation's national parks, who oversaw the creation of the national monuments system and who stood on the edge of the Grand Canyon, declaring, "Leave it as it is."

That Teddy is the subject of David Gessner's new book, “Leave It As It Is: A Journey Through Theodore Roosevelt's American Wilderness," coming out Aug. 11 from Simon & Schuster.

As in his 2016 book, "All the Wild That Remains," a dual biography of the writers Edward Abbey and Wallace Stegner, Gessner literally took to the road to track his subject, visiting sites in Roosevelt's life from the Dakota badlands to Yellowstone and Yosemite.

Considerable focus is put on Bears Ears National Monument in Utah, rich in Native American cultural and archaeological sites. The Trump administration has tried to reduce the boundaries of the monument sharply, opening up the land for mining.

Gessner is a professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where he chairs the creative writing department. He’s also editor-in-chief of UNCW literary magazine Ecotone. His many books include "My Green Manifesto" (2011), "The Tarball Chronicles" (2012), about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and "Ultimate Glory (2017), a personal memoir about the sport once known as Ultimate Frisbee.

New military thriller from Tata

Retired Brig. Gen. A.J. "Tony" Tata, who often surfs at Wrightsville Beach, was nominated by President Trump in April to serve as U.S. undersecretary of defense for policy.

However, Tata, who's written a string of military thrillers, including "Besieged," "Direct Fire" and "Dark Winter," is not leaving his literary career totally behind.

His latest, "Reaper: Drone Strike," co-authored with veteran Army Ranger and sniper Nicholas Irving, comes out July 21 from St. Martin's Press. The new novel takes its hero, Army Ranger Vick Harwood, undercover into Syrian territory in the midst of its civil war.

'Dracula’ reborn

Back in 2013, the since-closed Browncoat Theatre in Wilmington staged "Dracula Re-Imagined" by Richard Davis, who ran the theater and pub. The play went on to win Best Original Production at the StarNews Wilmington Theater Awards in 2014.

Now, the play has been adapted as a comic, retitled "Cult of Dracula." The re-imagining of the vampire legend includes a character named Bram, after "Dracula" author Bram Stoker.

Ben Steelman can be reached at 910-616-1788 or peacebsteelman@gmail.com.