John Muir, a young Scottish immigrant, had not yet become a famed conservationist when he first trekked into the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, not long after the Civil War. He was so captivated by what he saw that he decided to devote his life to the glorification and preservation of this magnificent wilderness. My First Summer in the Sierra, whose heart is the diary Muir kept while tending sheep in Yosemite country, enticed thousands of Americans to visit this magical place, and resounds with Muir’s regard for the “divine, enduring, unwasteable wealth” of the natural world. A classic of environmental literature, My First Summer in the Sierra continues to inspire readers to seek out such places for themselves and make them their own.
John Muir|Mike Davis
About John Muir
Bill McKibben is the author of The End of Nature, The Age of Missing Information, and Long Distance: A Year of Living Strenuously, among other books. He lives in upstate New York.
About Mike Davis
A former meatcutter and long-distance truck driver, Mike Davis has taught urban theory at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, was a fellow at the Getty Institute, and was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. He is the author of Prisoners of the American Dream and City of Quartz. He was born in Fontana, a suburb of Los Angeles, and now lives in Pasadena.
Praise
Praise
“As more and more of us grow aghast at what we have done to the world we started with, Muir’s reverence and devotion will seem keenly germane, and our regret may be transmuted into a fight for the future.” —Edward Hoagland