Showing results for "John Muir" in Historical

John Muir is regarded as the "father of America's national parks" and is a towering figure in the history of that country's involvement with ecology. This wonderful memoir pays tribute to a giant of ecology and is essential listening for lovers of natural history.

Best known for his association with the Yosemite Valley and Sierra Nevada Mountains, John Muir also explored the southern states, Alaska, and the Mojave Desert. His studies generated volumes of poetic, evocative writings. As America expanded westward, Muir witnessed the plunder of the land and became a driving force in efforts to protect the natural world. He influenced four U.S. Presidents to sponsor legislation that protected forests and established or expanded America's national parks.

"I am hopelessly and forever a mountaineer," John Muir wrote. "Civilization and fever and all the morbidness that has been hooted at me has not dimmed my glacial eye, and I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature's loveliness. My own special self is nothing". In Donald Worster's magisterial biography, John Muir's "special self" is fully explored as is his extraordinary ability, then and now, to get others to see the sacred beauty of the natural world.