A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir

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More About This Book

Overview


"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.

Editorial Reviews

Dennis Drabelle
[Worster] captures Muir the man with economy and grace, and gives the reader a clear sense of his public stature: We are reaching a point where Nature is no longer considered just a storehouse of economic resources, Worster argues, but "a value in itself. No one in nineteenth-century America was more important than Muir in persuading people to move toward such a vision."
—The Washington Post
John Wilson
Worster brings superb scholarly credentials to the task…Readers with a merely casual interest in Muir aren't likely to persist. But the doughty ones who stay the course will be rewarded. The record of Muir's life that Worster has scrupulously assembled, fascinating in its own right, takes on added significance as Worster sets it in context.
—The New York Times
More Reviews (2) Fewer Reviews
Publishers Weekly
Environmental writer and professor Worster (Dust Bowl, Nature's Economy) presents the inspiring story of John Muir, who rebelled against orthodoxy and became one of the founders of modern environmentalism. Born in 1838 in Scotland, Muir's family emigrated to Wisconsin when he was ten. For the next 12 years, he labored on his family's farm, then left home to become a machinist and enroll in a University of Wisconsin botany course. His main interest, however, was exploring the remaining wilderness of the U.S. Finally settling in California, Muir mastered botany on his own, and by 1871 was providing the Smithsonian with regular reports of his findings. While continuing his travels, including several trips to Alaska, Muir wrote articles for local and national journals urging conservation, and was elected the first president of the Sierra Club in 1892, a position he would hold for the rest of his life. Worster's thorough, involving biography sets Muir's adventurous story against the technical and scientific culture of the day, featuring some of the period's leading thinkers and doers-including Ralph Waldo Emerson and President Theodore Roosevelt-taking on environmental issues that resonate now more than ever.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Library Journal

Worster (history, Univ. of Kansas) draws on John Muir's (1838-1914) correspondence and writings to offer an enlightening biography of the influential naturalist. Born in Scotland, Muir grew up in Wisconsin, attended the university in Madison, worked in factories and sawmills, and lived in Canada during the last years of the Civil War. Later he settled in California, worked in the Yosemite region, and traveled throughout the Sierra Nevadas. Worster adroitly places Muir within the chronicles of American history and thoroughly depicts his subject's intellect and understanding of nature as well as Muir's life as a husband, father, successful farmer, writer, and world traveler. Up until his death in 1914, Muir strove diligently for the preservation of nature. Competently documented, this all-inclusive biography explains the life and times of a figure known to all who love nature and will appeal to general readers and anyone interested in the early roots of today's green movement and its founding fathers.
—Patricia Ann Owens

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780195166828
  • Publisher: Oxford University Press
  • Publication date: 10/21/2008
  • Pages: 544
  • Sales rank: 356,728
  • Product dimensions: 6.10 (w) x 9.30 (h) x 1.80 (d)

Meet the Author

Donald 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),

Table of Contents

Prologue Muir's Trail 3

Ch. 1 The Scottish Lowlands 13

Ch. 2 "That Glorious Wisconsin Wilderness" 42

Ch. 3 Climbing the Ice Mountain 67

Ch. 4 Border Crossings 92

Ch. 5 The Long Walk 118

Ch. 6 Paradise Found 149

Ch. 7 The Higher Peaks 181

Ch. 8 Coming in from the Cold 216

Ch. 9 The Shores of Alaska 246

Ch. 10 Husbandry 276

Ch. 11 A Call to Lead 305

Ch. 12 The Company of Green Men 332

Ch. 13 Earthquakes 366

Ch. 14 The Troubled Nature of Wealth 401

Epilogue "Slight Progress Heavenward" 454

Bibliography 494

Index 511

Customer Reviews

Average Rating 4.5
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Sort by: Showing all of 3 Customer Reviews

  • Posted May 2, 2009

    more from this reviewer

    A Most Excellent Biography

    By Dag Stomberg, St. Andrews, Scotland

    This biography of John Muir begins in Scotland, carries us through his
    early years in Wisconsin, to his pilgrimage to California and beyond.

    An explanation of his Philosophy is well done.

    Fundamental reading for all of us who have a passion for nature.

    The Bibliography to this book is superb.

    2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Posted September 16, 2011

    If you have a Passion for Nature- a must read

    If you are a nature enthusiast, and are aware of all the good that John Muir did for our natural parks and forests, you will love this book. I became interested in Muir after a summer trip to Yosemite National Park. Makes you realize even more how vulnerable our natural resources are to big industry and those who are just interested in making money at all costs. We came close to losing our gentle giants, the Sequoias, to the lumber companies. But through government intervention and protection they are still there for all to see. It is written nicely and reads well even though it is non-fiction.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Anonymous

    Posted April 19, 2011

    No text was provided for this review.

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