Description
Book SynopsisA new edition of Muir’s writings that places his environmentalist ideals alongside his damaging prejudices Essayist. Preservationist. Mountain man. Inventor. John Muir may be California’s best-known icon. A literary naturalist and founder of the Sierra Club and Yosemite National Park, Muir left his legacy on the landscape and on paper. But the celebrity of John Muir does not tell the whole story. In
Essential Muir, for the first time, Muir's selected writings include those that show his ecological vision without ignoring his racism, providing a more complete portrait of the man. Taking the best of John Muir’s writings on nature and placing them alongside his musings on religion, society, and his fellow humans,
Essential Muir asks the reader to consider how these connect, and what that means for Muir’s legacy in environmentalism today.
Fred D. White’s selections from Muir’s writings, and his illuminating commentary in his revised introduction, reveal the complex man and writer behind the iconic name. In the new foreword, Jolie Varela (Tule River Yokut and Paiute) of Indigenous Women Hike speaks back to Muir, addressing the impact of his words and actions on California Indians. This collection, which highlights John Muir’s charms and confronts his flaws, is vital for understanding the history of environmental thought.
Table of ContentsContents
Foreword
Introduction
Part One: The Visionary Inventor
“Knowledge and Inventions,” from The Story of My Boyhood and Youth “The World and the University,” from The Story of My Boyhood and Youth
Part Two: The Wandering Minstrel
“Kentucky Forests and Caves and Through the Cumberland Mountains” from A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf “The River Country of Georgia, Through Florida's Swamps and Forests, and across Florida to Cedar Keys,” from A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf
Part Three: The Nature Scribe and Rhapsode
“In Camp on the North Fork of the Merced” from My First Summer in the Sierra “The Mono Indians of Bloody Canon” from My First Summer in the Sierra “A Near View of the High Sierra,” from The Mountains of California “A Windstorm in the Forest,” from The Mountains of California “A Yosemite Earthquake” from The Yosemite “Yosemite Falls at Midnight,” from The Life and Letters of John Muir “Nut Time in Squirrelville,” from The Life and Letters of John Muir “Yosemite Glaciers,” New York Tribune, Dec. 5, 1871 “Indian Tribes in the Yosemite Valley” from The Yosemite
Part Four: The Global Adventurer
“Eskimos and Walrus,” from The Cruise of the Corwin “Stickeen vs. the Glacier,” from Stickeen “Voyage to East Africa,” from John Muir’s Last Journey
Part Five: The Planet Steward
“God’s First Temples: How Shall We Preserve Our Forests?” Sacramento Daily Union, Feb. 5, 1876 “The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West,” Atlantic Monthly, Aug. 1897 “Thoughts upon National Parks” (ca. 1895), from John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir
Sources
Major Works of John Muir
About the Editor
