Speaking for Nature: The Literary Naturalists, from Transcendentalism to the Birth of the American Environmental Movement

by Paul Brooks

Overview

Beginning with Thoreau, nature writers not only have influenced our appreciation of the natural world but also have helped to preserve the American wilderness, from the Maine Woods to Yosemite and the Sierra. Writer and activist Paul Brooks presents narrative portraits of great literary naturalists, offering a 200-year history of the country's movement toward conservation. Profiles of leaders in the fight to protect the environment and safeguard our natural heritage include John Burroughs, John Muir, William Beebe, and many others. A new Foreword has been written for this edition by Linda Lear, author of Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature.
"A richly informative book which portrays the nature writers from Henry Thoreau to Rachel Carson who shaped the development of conservation in America." — San Francisco Chronicle
"A brisk and illuminating survey of the naturalists who by their writing moved Americans into the age of ecology." — The New York Times Book Review
"This valuable book reviews the past century of American nature writing from the prose rhapsodies of Thoreau and Muir to the alarm calls of Bernard DeVoto and Rachel Carson . . . writers who have fought bravely and well and have left us a powerful heritage upon which to build." — Boston Globe
"Paul Brooks's gracefully illustrated text, in the very tradition it honors, offers hope that reason and reverence — the poetry of science — will prevail." — Washington Post Book World

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780486781433
Publisher:	Dover Publications
Publication date:	07/16/2014
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Paul Brooks (1909–98) was an environmental activist, writer, and editor-in-chief at Houghton Mifflin for 25 years, where he edited groundbreaking books such as Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and Roger Tory Peterson's field guides to birds. His first book, Roadless Area, won the two top literary awards in its field: the John Burroughs Medal and the Sarah Chapman Francis Medal of the Garden Club of America.

Table of Contents

Foreword to the Dover Edition v

Author's Note viii

Introduction: A Century of Changing Values xii

I "The Two Johns": Burroughs and Muir 1

II East Meets West: The Yosemite Story 33

III The Gentle Art of Seeing 59

IV The Forces of Nature and Man 81

V A Naturalist in the White House 103

VI Birds and Men 133

VII Birds and Women 163

VIII Figs from Thistles 181

IX Nature Lovers and Nature Fakers 199

X The "Old-Fashioned Naturalist" 219

XI Conservation in Action 233

XII The Wilderness Ideal 251

XIII A New Direction 271

Further Reading 289

Index 295