Book Reviews 493 at the hands of the police. Despite holding official citizenship, residents of Manhattan’s Middle West Side found that living in Hell’s Kitchen often curtailed their rights, as state officials refused them fair treatment before the law. The undermining of citizenship rights by authorities encouraged people to reject traditional political engagement in favor of racial and ethnic solidarities. Hell’s Kitchen comes alive in Varga’s descriptions of how urban inhabitants made use of the space around them, but this social history is often given short shift to a more theoretical engagement with critical space theory. Nonetheless, Varga skillfully demonstrates the importance of taking space seriously, and in doing so, provides a wealth of new insights into community formation, the meanings of progressive reform, and the value of citizenship in turn-of-the-century New York City. In doing so, he raises provocative questions about New York State’s other urban centers. Readers of New York History looking for an easy read or focused social history should probably skip this volume, but for those interested in how to “take space seriously” and those searching out new ways to understand the relationships between New York State’s cities and its people, Hells Kitchen and the Battle of Space is an invaluable read. The Most Defiant Devil: William Temple Hornaday and His Controversial Crusade to Save American Wildlife. By Gregory Dehler. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2013, 262 pages, $29.95 Cloth. Reviewed by Joshua Britton, Independent Scholar Authors of scholarly biographies with a thematic emphasis have a difficult balancing act. They must demonstrate the integral role their subject played within the theme whilst contextualizing it within the confines of the subject’s life. In the field of environmental history this approach is particularly fruitful. Recently, both Douglas Brinkley’s The Wilderness Warrior and Jonathan Spiro’s Defending the Master Race utilized biographical accounts of Theodore Roosevelt and Madison Grant, respectively, to illuminate different aspects of the American conservation movement in the early twentieth-century. In The Most Defiant Devil, Gregory J. Dehler 494 ■ NEW YORK HISTORY attempts the same approach. Dehler’s subject is William Temple Hornaday, the first director of the Bronx Zoo and one of the leading figures in the wildlife preservation movement. Dehler’s work is both welcomed and timely. The cultural and social history of the environmental movement and the zoo are emerging fields of academic study. During the conservation movement’s infancy, Hornaday participated in many of its most pressing controversies, and in many ways his uncompromising stand against market hunters and politicians foreshadowed how environmentalism would evolve. His writings were equally important; they introduced millions to the principles of wildlife preservation. A full-length, scholarly account of Hornaday’s career that places him within the intellectual currents of the time is desperately needed. However, Dehler’s account fails to balance the context of Hornaday’s life with his importance and influence on the conservation movement. Dehler succeeds in providing a great deal of detail on Hornaday’s remarkable eighty-two-year life. He mines the voluminous material Hornaday produced as a writer, director of the Bronx Zoo, and conservation advocate. In doing so, he uncovered several archival gems. Dehler also notes relationships Hornaday forged with many prominent figures interested in the conservation movement, ranging from Roosevelt and Grant to Andrew Carnegie. He also demonstrates how Hornaday used these connections to further his agenda. The work deepens our understanding of the role that Hornaday played in the development and day-to-day management of the Bronx Zoo (or as he preferred to call it, the New York Zoological Gardens), in several preservation-friendly restrictions on hunting , and the establishment of reserves. Dehler also effectively demonstrates Hornaday’s prickly personality that made him “embittered and full of animosity ” against those who disagreed with him or he perceived had slighted him(13). Readers of New York History will perhaps be most interested in Hornaday’s involvement with the Bronx Zoo. The author effectively describes the zoo’s early days, Hornaday’s passion for the project, and its importance to the burgeoning zoo movement in early twentieth-century America. It is clear that Hornaday...