On The Trail Of John Muir

Follow the man who made the US go green. Confidante of presidents, father of the American national park system, trailblazer of world conservation and voted a Man of the Millennium, John Muir's life and work is of continuing relevance. He was a man ahead of his time who saw the wilderness he loved threatened by industrialisation, and determined to protect it, a crusade in which he was largely successful. His love of the wilderness began at an early age and he was filled with wanderlust all his life.

Braving mosquitoes and black bears Cherry Good set herself on the trail - Dunbar, Scotland; Fountain Lake and Hickory Hill, Wisconsin; Yosemite Valley and the Sierra Nevada, California; the Grand Canyon, Arizona' Alaska; and Canada - to tell his story. John Muir was himself a prolific writer, and Good draws on his books, articles, letters and diaries to produce an account that is lively, intimate, humorous and anecdotal, and that provides refreshing new insights into the here or world conservation.

Muir's importance has long been acknowledged in the US with around 200 sites of scenic beauty named after him. He was a Founder of The Sierra Club which now has over 1/2million members. Due to the movement he started, some 360 million acres of wilderness are now protected. This is a book which shows John Muir not simply as a hero but as a likeable, humorous and self-effacing man of extraordinary vision.