Leave It As It Is: A Journey Through Theodore Roosevelt's American Wilderness

Leave It As It Is: A Journey Through Theodore Roosevelt's American Wilderness

by David Gessner
Leave It As It Is: A Journey Through Theodore Roosevelt's American Wilderness

Leave It As It Is: A Journey Through Theodore Roosevelt's American Wilderness

by David Gessner

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Overview

Bestselling author David Gessner’s wilderness road trip inspired by America’s greatest conservationist, Theodore Roosevelt, is “a rallying cry in the age of climate change” (Robert Redford).

“Leave it as it is,” Theodore Roosevelt announced while viewing the Grand Canyon for the first time. “The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it.” Roosevelt’s pronouncement signaled the beginning of an environmental fight that still wages today. To reconnect with the American wilderness and with the president who courageously protected it, acclaimed nature writer and New York Times bestselling author David Gessner embarks on a great American road trip guided by Roosevelt’s crusading environmental legacy.

Gessner travels to the Dakota badlands where Roosevelt awakened as a naturalist; to Yellowstone, Yosemite, and the Grand Canyon where Roosevelt escaped during the grind of his reelection tour; and finally, to Bears Ears, Utah, a monument proposed by Native Tribes that is currently embroiled in a national conservation fight. Along the way, Gessner questions and reimagines Roosevelt’s vision for today’s lands.

“Insightful, observant, and wry,” (BookPage) Leave It As It Is offers an arresting history of Roosevelt’s pioneering conservationism, a powerful call to arms, and a profound meditation on our environmental future.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781982105051
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publication date: 08/03/2021
Pages: 352
Sales rank: 393,415
Product dimensions: 5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

David Gessner is the author of ten books, including the New York Times bestseller All the Wild That Remains. He has taught environmental writing as a Briggs-Copeland Lecturer at Harvard and is currently a professor and department chair at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, where he founded the award-winning literary journal Ecotone. Gessner lives in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Table of Contents

Prelude: Theodore on the Edge 1

Chapter 1 Into the Badlands 9

Chapter 2 Teddyland 39

Interlude: Theodore Absorbed 69

Chapter 3 Complicated Nature 79

Chapter 4 The Cowboy Problem 105

Interlude: The Yosemite Summit 133

Chapter 5 Monumental 141

Chapter 6 Confluence 165

Interlude: Theodore Descends 209

Chapter 7 Under Siege 219

Chapter 8 Fight and Flight 253

Postlude: The West from Above 273

Acknowledgments 285

Appendix: Proclamations 291

Appendix: Voices 307

Recommended Reading 315

Illustration Credits 323

Index 325

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