by Donald WorsterIt's not enough to say that John Muir was the world's leading advocate for wilderness or that he was instrumental in the creation of Yosemite National Park and the Sierra Club. Worster, who has also written a biography of John Wesley Powell, knows that to fully appreciate Muir as an inspired and influential naturalist and pacifist who wrote indelible essays articulating a pragmatic approach to conservation, one has to understand his struggle to push beyond his father's harsh evangelical Christian orthodoxy and open himself to the beauty of nature. Born in Scotland, raised in Wisconsin, Muir possessed a remarkable mechanical aptitude but was happiest wandering in the wild. Worster avidly chronicles Muir's inaugural walk from Indianapolis to Florida and his subsequent journeys around the world, but it was his ecstatic, often reckless, yet profoundly illuminating explorations of the Sierras and Alaska's glaciers that gave weight to his call to value and preserve natural resources. Worster gives equal weight to Muir's inner and outer journeys in this marvelously fluent portrait of the man who sought to establish an ethic of environmental restraint a century ago and whose powerful arguments still hold.
Copyright 2008 Booklist Reviews.
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