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Donald Worster A Passion For Nature: The Life Of John Muir
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 0195166825 / 9780195166828 Hardcover BOOK
Based on Muir's full private correspondence & meeting modern scholarly standards, yet full of rich detail & personal anecdote, uncovering the complex inner life behind the legend, the book biography offers a wealth of insight into a man whose passion for nature remains unsurpassed. 30 Illus, 5 maps; 6x9 inches, 512 pgs. 35%
'"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. A Passion for Nature is the most complete account of the great conservationist and founder of the Sierra Club ever written. It is the first to be based on Muir's full private correspondence and to meet modern scholarly standards. Yet it is also full of rich detail and personal anecdote, uncovering the complex inner life behind the legend of the solitary mountain man. It traces Muir from his boyhood in Scotland and frontier Wisconsin to his adult life in California right after the Civil War up to his death on the eve of World War I. It explores his marriage and family life, his relationship with his abusive father, his many friendships with the humble and famous (including Theodore Roosevelt and Ralph Waldo Emerson), and his role in founding the modern American conservation movement. Inspired by Muir's passion for the wilderness, Americans created a long and stunning list of national parks and wilderness areas, Yosemite most prominent among them. Yet the book also describes a Muir who was a successful fruit-grower, a talented scientist and world-traveler, a doting father and husband, a self-made man of wealth and political influence. A man for whom mountaineering was "a pathway to revelation and worship."
For anyone wishing to more fully understand America's first great environmentalist, and the enormous influence he still exerts today, Donald Worster's biography offers a wealth of insight into the passionate nature of a man whose passion for nature remains unsurpassed.
WHAT THE EXPERTS ARE SAYING:
"John Muir's battles to preserve the Sierra Nevada and Yosemite Park, his founding of the Sierra Club, his final, bitter, unsuccessful effort to save Hetch Hetchy Valley, his pioneering insights into the geology of the glacial age, and his late Victorian combination of religion and pantheism have been extensively chronicled. What is unique about A Passion for Nature is the skill with which Worster places Muir in a political context. Worster helps us understand how the love of nature is related to other social movements for equality, that human indifference to the natural world is morally an example of the oppressive hierarchies that mar our history." --Carl Pope, Executive Director, Sierra Club
"A towering biography of a towering figure! John Muir is one of those very few Americans who reshaped the way we saw the world. This volume, from one of our most eminent historians, makes clear both the sources and the meaning of Muir's great and wild epiphany." --Bill McKibben, author of The Bill McKibben Reader
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
David Worster is Hall Distinguished Professor of American History, University of Kansas and the author of many books, including A River Running West (OUP 2000); The Wealth of Nature: Environmental History and the Ecological Imagination (OUP 1993); and Under Western Skies: Nature and History in the American West (OUP 1993).
Price:
31.20 USD
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Donald Worster A PASSION FOR NATURE: THE LIFE OF JOHN MUIR
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 0199782245 / 9780199782246 Paperback BOOK
Table of Contents
Reviews
'"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. A Passion for Nature is the most complete account of the great conservationist and founder of the Sierra Club ever written. It is the first to be based on Muir's full private correspondence and to meet modern scholarly standards. Yet it is also full of rich detail and personal anecdote, uncovering the complex inner life behind the legend of the solitary mountain man. It traces Muir from his boyhood in Scotland and frontier Wisconsin to his adult life in California right after the Civil War up to his death on the eve of World War I. It explores his marriage and family life, his relationship with his abusive father, his many friendships with the humble and famous (including Theodore Roosevelt and Ralph Waldo Emerson), and his role in founding the modern American conservation movement. Inspired by Muir's passion for the wilderness, Americans created a long and stunning list of national parks and wilderness areas, Yosemite most prominent among them. Yet the book also describes a Muir who was a successful fruit-grower, a talented scientist and world-traveler, a doting father and husband, a self-made man of wealth and political influence. A man for whom mountaineering was "a pathway to revelation and worship."
For anyone wishing to more fully understand America's first great environmentalist, and the enormous influence he still exerts today, Donald Worster's biography offers a wealth of insight into the passionate nature of a man whose passion for nature remains unsurpassed.
WHAT THE EXPERTS ARE SAYING:
"John Muir's battles to preserve the Sierra Nevada and Yosemite Park, his founding of the Sierra Club, his final, bitter, unsuccessful effort to save Hetch Hetchy Valley, his pioneering insights into the geology of the glacial age, and his late Victorian combination of religion and pantheism have been extensively chronicled. What is unique about A Passion for Nature is the skill with which Worster places Muir in a political context. Worster helps us understand how the love of nature is related to other social movements for equality, that human indifference to the natural world is morally an example of the oppressive hierarchies that mar our history." --Carl Pope, Executive Director, Sierra Club
"A towering biography of a towering figure! John Muir is one of those very few Americans who reshaped the way we saw the world. This volume, from one of our most eminent historians, makes clear both the sources and the meaning of Muir's great and wild epiphany." --Bill McKibben, author of The Bill McKibben Reader
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
David Worster is Hall Distinguished Professor of American History, University of Kansas and the author of many books, including A River Running West (OUP 2000); The Wealth of Nature: Environmental History and the Ecological Imagination (OUP 1993); and Under Western Skies: Nature and History in the American West (OUP 1993).
Price:
23.40 USD
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Donald Worster A River Running West: The Life Of John Wesley Powell
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 0195099915 / 9780195099911 Hardcover BOOK
A vividly written biography of a great American explorer & environmental pioneer by one of America's pre-eminent historians. Powell led the expedition that put the Colorado River on American maps & revealed the Grand Canyon to the world. 55 halftones, line drawings & line illus, 4 maps; 6x9 inches, 688 pgs.
'A magisterial, beautifully written work by one of the most highly acclaimed historians in America. A sweeping narrative of the life and times of a pioneering explorer and conservationist. The last major biography of Powell was written by Wallace Stegner fifty years ago (Beyond the 100th Meridian).
If the word "hero" still belonged in the historian's lexicon, it would certainly be applied to John Wesley Powell. Intrepid explorer, careful scientist, talented writer, and dedicated conservationist, Powell led the expedition that put the Colorado River on American maps and revealed the Grand Canyon to the world. Now comes the first biography of this towering figure in almost 50 years--a book that captures his life in all its heroism, idealism, and ambivalent, ambiguous humanity.
HONORS:
A Best Book of 2001 by The Los Angeles Times
Selected as a Library Journal Best Book of 2001
REVIEWS:
'Review from other book by this author Worster writes vividly ... much of his material is carefully deconstructed documentation and if the quotations read as larger than life, so were the key actors ... it is for the reviewer (a scientist) to muse, after completing this magnificent and significant text, that the true value of Worster's critique is for all our futures, under scenarios of climate change and population growth.' ' - Malcolm Newson, Ecumene
"A vividly written biography of a great American explorer and environmental pioneer by one of America's pre-eminent historians." --Donald Worster, Hall Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Kansas
"It's a case of man and mountain matching one another: Donald Worster is one of the finest American historians of his generation, and John Wesley Powell one of the most impressive Americans of his time. This book is very accessible, very thorough, and very welcome." -- Larry McMurtry, author of Lonesome Dove, Crazy Hose, and Roads
"In this superb book, Worster backs up his claims about the depth and breadth of Powell's vision as 'one of the leading interpreters of the West, an influential voice on its land and water issues as well as its treatment of indigenous peoples.' Worster captures Powell's rich life and the life of a nation struggling to come to grips with its vast resources." --Audobon
Price:
35.10 USD
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