The American Conservation Movement: John Muir and His Legacy

Stephen R. Fox

Univ of Wisconsin Press, 1985 - Biography & Autobiography - 436 pages

John Muir and His Legacy is at once a biography of this remarkable man--the first work to make unrestricted use of all of Muir's manuscripts and personal papers--and a history of the century-old fight to save the natural environment. Stephen Fox traces the conservation movement's diverse, colorful, and tumultuous history, from the successful campaign to establish Yosemite National Park in 1890 to the movement's present day concerns of nuclear waste and acid rain.
Conservation has run a cyclical course, Fox contends, from its origins in the 1890s when it was the province of amateurs, to its takeover by professionals with quasi-scientific notions, and back, in the 1960s to its original impetus. Since then man's view of himself as "the last endangered species" has sparked an explosion of public interest in environmentalism.
First published in 1981 by Little, Brown, this book was warmly received as both a biography of Muir and a history of the American conservation movement. It is now available in this new Wisconsin paperback edition.

Contents

• The Yosemite Prophet 5 5 27: 5
• Nature and the Biped Lord: 27
• A Proper Cultivated Plant: 54
• THE AMERICAN CONSERVATION MOVEMENT 18901975: 101
• Wildlife Protectors 19001935: 148
• Franklin D Roosevelt and New Deal Conservation: 183
• Six FreeLancers: 218
• Muir Redux 19451965: 250
• The Last Endangered Species: 291
• People and Politics: 333
• The Religion of Conservation: 358
• Acknowledgments: 377
• Index: 429

Popular passages

Page 417 - When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The American Conservation Movement: John Muir and His Legacy
• Author: Stephen R. Fox
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press, 1985
• ISBN: 0299106349, 9780299106348
• Length: 436 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Environmentalists & Naturalists; History / General; Nature / Animals / Wildlife; Nature / Environmental Conservation & Protection; Nature / Natural Resources