John Muir and the Ice That Started a Fire
How a Visionary and the Glaciers of Alaska Changed America
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5.0 • 4 Ratings
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
A dual biography of two of the most compelling elements in the narrative of wild America, John Muir and Alaska.
John Muir was a fascinating man who was many things: inventor, scientist, revolutionary, druid (a modern day Celtic priest), husband, son, father and friend, and a shining son of the Scottish Enlightenment -- both in temperament and intellect. Kim Heacox, author of The Only Kayak, bring us a story that evolves as Muir’s life did, from one of outdoor adventure into one of ecological guardianship---Muir went from impassioned author to leading activist. The book is not just an engaging and dramatic profile of Muir, but an expose on glaciers, and their importance in the world today. Muir shows us how one person changed America, helped it embrace its wilderness, and in turn, gave us a better world.
December 2014 will mark the 100th anniversary of Muir’s death. Muir died of a broken heart, some say, when Congress voted to approve the building of Hetch Hetchy Dam in Yosemite National Park. Perhaps in the greatest piece of environmental symbolism in the U.S. in a long time, on the California ballot this November is a measure to dismantle the Hetch Hetchy Dam.
Muir’s legacy is that he reordered our priorities and contributed to a new scientific revolution that was picked up a generation later by Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson, and is championed today by influential writers like E.O. Wilson and Jared Diamond. Heacox will take us into how Muir changed our world, advanced the science of glaciology and popularized geology. How he got people out there. How he gave America a new vision of Alaska, and of itself.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Heacox (The Only Kayak) succeeds in producing a wonderfully personal biography of Muir, while also discussing a larger planetary issue that many know about only in passing. Heacox's fascinating treatment of Muir's life recounts his wilderness adventures, details the quirks and contradictions of his personality, and contextualizes his place in the infancy of the conservation movement. A cofounder of the Sierra Club, Muir was "a self-taught naturalist, glaciologist, ecologist"; he "popularized geology," is credited with birthing the movement to preserve nature instead of viewing it merely as an endless source of raw materials, and his efforts helped save our first national park, Yosemite. Had he been born even a little earlier or a little later, America today may not have many of its most treasured pristine environments. While we are fortunate for Muir's efforts, Heacox takes it a step further and analogizes his contributions to those of contemporary efforts to combat global climate change. The book is an engaging and informative look at Muir and his life's work, as well as a timely call to action that poses difficult questions to the reader and the philosophies that underpin modern life. Illus.
