NEWS

2025

Dec 29 — A long essay on Matthiessen, the Himalayas, The Snow Leopard, and cryptids — titled "A Near-Mythic Beast" — in the Winter 2025/2026 issue of Orion.

Dec 17 — True Nature is chosen by T. Edward Nickens for Garden & Gun's "Favorite Books of 2025" list.

Dec 3 — True Nature appears on The New Yorker's "Best Books of 2025" recommended list.

It has also been added to Vogue's "Best Books of 2025 So Far" list, where Taylor Antrim calls it "a highly entertaining and impressively hefty biography of Matthiessen."

Dec 1 — "Even-handed, perceptive, smoothly narrated and exhaustively researched," Timothy Farrington writes in a review of True Nature for Literary Review. "Richardson is very good on the limits of Matthiessen's vision, the romantic fog on his lens," and also "unsparing about Matthiessen's flaws."

Nov 28 — A new review of True Nature in the Washington Examiner, where Diane Scharper calls it "evocative," and "a vivid portrait."

And in Lion's Roar, Tracy Franz calls it "captivating."

Nov 24 — A conversation with Scott Chaskey for the podcast Nature Revisited.

Nov 22 — Another big interview for the book is out today, this one in The Washington Post. John Williams asks terrific questions, including, "Even after all this time spent researching and writing, what do you feel still eludes you most about [Matthiessen]?"

Nov 21 — "Matthiessen’s many masks are on display in True Nature, a deeply researched and artfully executed biography," Sam Sacks writes in The Wall Street Journal. "Mr. Richardson has drawn from an enormous range of sources—importantly, he appears to have received the full cooperation of Ms. Eckhart and Matthiessen’s children—to better understand a gifted, difficult man who, for all his adventures and good fortune, seemed resolutely dissatisfied."

Nov 20 — True Nature is included in The Washington Post's "50 notable works of nonfiction from 2025" list.

Nov 14 — A terrific review of True Nature, from the Winter 2025 print issue of Tricycle, has just been published online. David Guy calls the book "a magnificent literary biography, painstakingly researched, intricately organized, and beautifully written, fully worthy of its sensitive, restless, and driven subject. . . . It should be of interest to anyone drawn to the search for our true nature and the deepest truths of the human heart."

Nov 12 — James Campbell for the Times Literary Supplement: "In True Nature, Lance Richardson offers vivid summaries of Matthiessen’s far-flung adventures. . . . [W]ell written, diligent in its reading of both fiction and nonfiction, and indulgent of Matthiessen’s idiosyncrasies."

Nov 11 — A long interview was published today in The Paris Review, about the magazine's founding and Matthiessen's involvement with the CIA. The interview was conducted by Dan Piepenbring, who writes: "True Nature offers a deft assessment of [Matthiessen's] work and a capacious telling of the forces that shaped his interest in everything from Zen Buddhism to environmentalism to cryptozoology to labor rights. Richardson conducted hundreds of interviews over seven and a half years, and his archival research yielded, among many other insights, a clearer picture of The Paris Review’s first years, when Matthiessen was doing double duty as a fiction editor and a secret agent."

Nov 6 — A review in The East Hampton Star by Scott Chaskey, one of Matthiessen's Zen students. "Richardson is an accomplished storyteller," Chaskey writes. "True Nature is beautifully written, generous, but also uncompromising, and Richardson handles the complexities with insight and grace."

Oct 31 — Rounding out the month, True Nature makes LitHub's "Best Reviewed Nonfiction" for October, with Matthiessen as the banner.

Oct 28 — A new conversation with Ryan Murdock for his Personal Landscapes podcast.

Oct 24 — "Capacious . . . Richardson’s carefully cross-hatched study of his subject depicts him in the wild, in all habitats and seasons," writes Stephen Smith in a generous review for the Financial Times.

Oct 23 — A review in The Spectator by Guy Stagg: “Impressive . . . A rigorous and balanced account of this restless soul. . . . Richardson shows how Matthiessen’s devotion to writing never wavered, despite depression, lawsuits and the painful gestation of several novels. In the process, he reveals the many sides (to quote Matthiessen’s own editor) of ‘an immensely complicated, neurotic, charming, iron-willed, uncertain, demanding author.’”

A conversaiton with Philip Gourevitch for the Leon Levy Center for Biography.

Oct 15 — A conversation with Benjamin Moser at the Brooklyn Public Library.

Oct 14 — Publication day for True Nature. A launch event at the New York Public Library with Sam Anderson; the recording is up on YouTube.

Two podcasts are out: Creative Journeys and the Virtual Memories Show.

A discussion with Terry McDonell on LitHub: "Who Was Peter Matthiessen, Really?"

John Kaag has a beautiful review in The Atlantic. "Elegant and rigorous. . . . Restlessness is deeply rooted in American mythology. . . . Few have embodied this supposedly American quality with more complexity than the writer Peter Matthiessen. And few have captured it with more clarity than Lance Richardson."

Oct 13 — Several new reviews the day before publication.

A starred review in Publishers Weekly: "Richardson writes movingly of the melding of ecology and divinity in Matthiessen’s literary work, and of his years of activism. The result is a touching, unsparing, and fully rendered portrait of a complex figure of 20th-century literature."

A sprawling, generous assessment by Maggie Doherty in The New Yorker: “The first biography of the writer, and an engaging one at that . . . grounded in remarkably candid interviews with Matthiessen’s family members and lovers.”

And Dwight Garner shares his opinion (“Dispassionate and thorough”) in the NYTimes.

Oct 12 — "Beautifully written, insightful, and engaging, True Nature is a tour de force depiction of a charismatic, restless, self-absorbed, immensely talented literary lion," Glenn Altschuler writes in a review for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

And at Open Letters Review, a review by Steve Donoghue: "This is a brilliant biography, bristling with ground-clearing primary-source research, filled with every findable fact about this writer, and, in an added twist as rare as it’s welcome, written with serious narrative flair."

Sept 27 — Pico Iyer reviews True Nature for Air Mail. "Lance Richardson . . . tracks his elusive prey along every uneven path with heroic thoroughness in his huge biography, assisted in great part by the journals, unpublished manuscripts, and letters the prodigious author generated in such profusion. . . . A fair-minded, grippingly paced, and tremendously readable narrative."

And in Garden & Gun, a joint review by Jonathan Miles of True Nature and Todd Goddard's Devouring Time, on Matthiessen's friend Jim Harrison: "Both are top-notch: sensitive, probing, admiring but never fawning, and exhaustively researched. The men's flaws go unscrubbed and their contradictions unsmoothed. Both books send you back to their works with freshened eyes and a hungry heart."

Sept 25 — "Are We Entering a New Golden Age of Biography?" For Literary Hub, Megan Marshall discusses Matthiessen and True Nature alongside new biographies of Gertrude Stein and James Baldwin.

Sept 23 — A new lengthy review has just gone up at Alta. "Richardson’s fine-toothed research establishes Peter’s importance as a writer and a singular inhabitant of his time," writes Terry McDonell. "That is the strength of a great biography—which True Nature is."

Sept 2 — Reviewing for The American Scholar, Michael O'Donnell describes True Nature as "enthralling, expertly told, and based on extraordinary research."

Aug 30 — True Nature is included in the Washington Post fall books preview of "anticipated releases."

Aug 13 — Library Journal includes True Nature in its fall books preview.

July 3 — In the first pre-publication review, Kirkus calls True Nature "a comprehensive, compelling life of a man of many parts."