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This engaging biography reconstructs the career of Senator George P. McLean, highlighting his spirited campaign to protect migratory birds from excessive game-hunting. McLean skillfully shepherded his bill through both Republican and Democratic administrations, overcame strident opposition in Congress, and established an enduring environmental policy.”

— Donald A. Ritchie, U.S. Senate Historian Emeritus

I would highly recommend this wonderful book, which focuses on the important role of George P. McLean in Connecticut and national politics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  I was fascinated by the role that McLean played in promoting legislation protecting birds; this is a part of environmental history that I knew nothing about.  Will Greeley cares deeply about the relative that is his subject matter; I was brought to tears by the epilogue of this book. 

— Stephen Armstrong, Social Studies Consultant, Connecticut State Department of Education, Past President, National Council for the Social Studies

Will Greeley has written a careful scholarly work about an influential politician whom historians have, unfortunately, neglected.   This is a thoughtful, and very nicely written, book about people and politics. Not to mention: birds too!  And there’s a bonus: this book is also a love song to a distant relative.  We need more historians who truly care about the people they’re writing about, and Greeley does just that.

— Robert D. Johnston, PhD Historian, University of Illinois/Chicago

This book provides wonderful insights into Connecticut politics from the Civil War to the Roaring Twenties. George P. McLean was a Connecticut powerhouse, serving in its legislature: governor, US attorney, and US senator. Will Greeley does a tremendous job in telling the extraordinary story of this man, his contributions, and his times.

— The Honorable Stanley A. Twardy, Jr., Partner, Day Pitney LLP, former United States Attorney for Connecticut, and chief of staff and aide to Lowell Weicker, governor and US senator for Connecticut

One of the tragedies of American politics is that we focus so much on presidents and, even then, only the most charismatic. Lost to posterity are the state legislators, governors, and congresspeople who have shaped the American experience. Greeley’s biography reminds us of Senator George P. McLean and the politics behind the progressive movements of Roosevelt and LaFollette, the crucible of World War I, and the irrational exuberance of the Roaring Twenties. Greater still is McLean’s conservation legacy. A richly painted portrait, no other book does as much to illustrate the life of this Connecticut icon.

— Dr. Michael P. Cullinane, PhD, MA, BA

I highly recommend A Connecticut Yankee Goes to Washington: Senator George P. McLean, Birdman of the Senate to anyone interested in the history of the conservation movement in the United States. For a quarter century, I have taught my ornithology students about the vital importance of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, but until I read this wonderful book, I had no knowledge of its origins. Will Greeley has done a great service to avian conservation by explaining, in lucid and engaging prose, how political maneuvering and strategies that sound all too familiar to a twenty-first-century ear produced the Weeks-McLean Act, and then the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which has weathered political challenges for more than one hundred years.

— Dr. Geoffrey Hill, PhD, MS, BS, professor and curator of birds

In the process of recovering the story of an esteemed ancestor, Will McLean Greeley has expansively illuminated a significant figure in Connecticut history and the transformative era of industrial growth and reform through which he lived. Greeley’s book vividly brings to life his great-great-uncle George P. McLean (1857–1932), Connecticut governor and longtime US senator, showing both his personal side as a well-to-do descendant of colonial Connecticut’s Protestant settlers and his career as a Republican Party lawyer and politician who engaged major state and national issues and personalities of his day, secured enactment of the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, and befriended national leaders such as President Calvin Coolidge. In doing so, Greeley has unearthed a wealth of new information about a neglected period of Connecticut history and its Republican side, an accomplishment that should interest professional historians and Connecticut history enthusiasts alike.

— Donald W. Rogers, author of Making Capitalism Safe: Work Safety and Health Regulation in America, 1880–1940 (2009)

The Weeks-McLean Act of 1913, one of the great milestones in the history of American bird conservation, has been eclipsed in the popular consciousness by its successor, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. George P. McLean was instrumental in the drafting and passage of both laws. This new and comprehensive biography of McLean—senator, governor, and pioneering conservationist—sets those accomplishments in the rich context of a life of public service in an America undergoing some of the most rapid changes in its history. Greeley’s gracefully written and thoroughly researched biography is highly recommended to anyone interested in the politics of conservation.

— Rick Wright, Victor Emanuel Nature Tours