Stewart L. Udall: Steward of the Land by Thomas G. Smith (review)

In this timely and exhaustive account, Thomas G. Smith offers a compelling, thoroughly researched biography of Stewart Udall, the three-term congressional representative from Arizona and secretary of the interior from 1961 to 1969. As Smith convincingly shows, Udall’s legacy extended beyond environmental protection to encompass other social justice causes and a life-long commitment to public service. While not without missteps, as the author rightly notes, Udall approached virtually every endeavor with an energetic sense of purpose. Far from a political cynic, Udall’s willingness to embrace new ideas, and his earnest, vision-oriented approach in his role as secretary of the interior, yielded a staggering list of achievements. This biography does more than merely confirm Udall’s accomplishments; it reinforces the far-reaching power of cabinet appointees and the spirit of bipartisanship that helped make it all possible in the 1960s. Despite Udall’s many years in Washington, filled with success and disappointment, he never abandoned his belief that government could be “the peoples’ power” (p. 136).

Beginning with Udall’s childhood in St. Johns, Arizona, Smith explores how Udall’s Mormon upbringing shaped his outlook. As Smith notes, “Stewart prized the Mormon tradition of sharing and community over rugged individualism” (p. 17). Udall came to define community expansively, incorporating the human and non-human. Smith presents Udall’s time in Congress and as secretary of interior as a political evolution of sorts. Initially, Udall possessed an appreciation of nature but remained “more interested in seeing dirt fly for federally constructed dams and irrigation projects than he was in preserving the earth’s natural magnificence” (pp. 77–78). Throughout his career, Udall wrestled with the West’s water dilemmas and pleas from environmental organizations, and satisfying those camps equally proved difficult.

Stewart Udall’s tenure in Congress helped prepare him for arguably the most rewarding, and challenging, chapter of his life as secretary of the interior under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. With exploits like summiting Mt. Fuji, Udall was, according to Smith, the embodiment of Kennedy’s New Frontier spirit. Despite frustrations with Kennedy and public gaffes so numerous that one exhausted White House aide quit itemizing them, Udall’s expertise and clear agenda sustained his place in Kennedy’s administration, and, with Congress, the two managed to achieve several significant measures, such as enhancing the Water Pollution Control Act and the establishment of several national seashores.

What Udall had hoped to inspire in Kennedy, whom he described as lacking a “poetic feel for the land,” he found with the Johnsons, particularly Lady Bird Johnson (p. 184). Some of the book’s most delightful passages document the “environmental courtship” between Lady Bird and Udall (p. 220). Johnson’s handling of the Vietnam War discouraged Udall, but over a roughly five-year period, the Wilderness Act and the Endangered Species Preservation Act were passed, the National Trails System was established, and a sizeable amount of land was placed under federal protection. Numerous factors led to this high point in environmental protection, but Udall undoubtedly played a central role, as this biography underscores. Smith also documents Udall’s eclectic career from the 1970s to his passing in 2010, which included directing his brother Morris Udall’s failed bid for the presidential nomination, writing about western history, and, more importantly, his long, tireless battle for those exposed to radiation from atomic testing and uranium mining in the Southwest. Smith credits Udall with doing more for the radiation victims than “any other national public figure” (p. 321).

Thomas Smith’s portrait of Udall’s life is a detailed one, but each chapter serves a purpose, if only to show Udall’s far-ranging interests and openness to the world around him. Skillfully weaving personal correspondence, congressional machinations, and Udall’s private writings, Smith achieves more than a straight-forward political biography. He captures Stewart Udall’s fascinating interior world without losing sight of the many...