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From Publishers Weekly
Environmental writer and professor Worster (Dust Bowl, Nature's Economy) presents the inspiring story of John Muir, who rebelled against orthodoxy and became one of the founders of modern environmentalism. Born in 1838 in Scotland, Muir's family emigrated to Wisconsin when he was ten. For the next 12 years, he labored on his family's farm, then left home to become a machinist and enroll in a University of Wisconsin botany course. His main interest, however, was exploring the remaining wilderness of the U.S. Finally settling in California, Muir mastered botany on his own, and by 1871 was providing the Smithsonian with regular reports of his findings. While continuing his travels, including several trips to Alaska, Muir wrote articles for local and national journals urging conservation, and was elected the first president of the Sierra Club in 1892, a position he would hold for the rest of his life. Worster's thorough, involving biography sets Muir's adventurous story against the technical and scientific culture of the day, featuring some of the period's leading thinkers and doers-including Ralph Waldo Emerson and President Theodore Roosevelt-taking on environmental issues that resonate now more than ever.
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From The Washington Post
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Dennis Drabelle John Muir (1838-1914) is revered as the founder of the modern American conservation movement. Anyone who knew him as a young man, however, would have pegged him as a budding inventor. After emigrating from Scotland with his family at 10, he grew up in small-town Wisconsin, where his religious-fanatic father made the boy work long, debilitating hours on their farm. According to historian and biographer Donald Worster, the adult John Muir concluded that, in driving him so mercilessly, his father had indulged a selfish urge "to further his patriarchal ambitions." Muir reacted by rejecting a major tenet of his father's creed -- the instrumental view of Nature so prevalent in 19th-century America -- and his example and writings won much of the nation over to his side. Yet the young Muir's most noticeable gift was not for philosophizing but for tinkering: When he was 20 and still living at home, he invented a contraption "that woke him in the morning by dropping him with a thud and setting him upright on his feet, ready for the day's work." Shortly afterward, he struck out on his own, and the physical escape seems to have freed up something in his soul. He moved to Madison, where his skills at repairing and improving machinery ensured that he could always find work. He studied fitfully at the university there, but after getting a taste for travel, he did more and more of it, in ever wilder settings, nurturing a passion for trees and plants. While trekking in Ontario in 1864, "he came upon the orchid Calypso borealis blooming on a barren hillside. Suddenly he was lifted up, thrilled to the point of tears by its unexpected beauty. . . . The Bible taught that the world was cursed with weeds and that they must be cleared away by human sweat, but Muir rejected that view. 'Are not all plants beautiful? or in some way useful? . . . The curse must be within ourselves.' " That quote within the quote comes from one of Muir's letters. Worster also draws liberally on Muir's articles and books, giving his narrative a solid grounding in his subject's own words. Naturally, Worster retells the great Muir stories, including how he rode a living tree. The incident took place along the Yuba River near Grass Valley, Calif., in 1874, when Muir was in his mid-30s. "All that day the wind roared," Worster writes, "and trees cracked off or were uprooted at the rate of one every two or three minutes. Far from running to shelter, he ventured out gleefully to feel the force of the wind and watch the dance of green conifer branches swaying and waving in the gale. 'Then it occurred to me,' he wrote, 'that it would be a fine thing to climb one of the trees to obtain a wider outlook and get my ear close to the Aeolian music of its topmost branches.' He climbed one of the tallest and swung there 'like a bobolink on a reed.' The top of the tree lashed back and forth in an arc of twenty or thirty degrees, yet he kept his high perch for hours." Muir added that the escapade was safer than it looked because he knew the species (Douglas fir) and chose a particularly sturdy tree. This hedonist in the rough -- neither marriage (in 1880) nor fatherhood (he had two daughters) put much of a crimp in his wandering ways -- was also a forceful advocate for environmental causes; in this, he was helped by his charm. One of his conquests was Teddy Roosevelt, who as president made a now-famous visit to Yosemite Valley with Muir in 1903. The Sierra Nevada in general and Yosemite in particular are so closely associated with Muir that he seems almost to have discovered them. He did not, but it was he who named the Sierra "the range of light," he who lobbied successfully to have Yosemite transferred from state to federal hands, and he who fought unsuccessfully to save the Yosemite region's other splendid valley, Hetch Hetchy, from being dammed up to provide water for San Francisco. Some commentators have suggested that Muir died of a broken heart after realizing that Hetch Hetchy was doomed. But in Worster's telling, Muir suffered from "persistent lung ailments" that steadily worsened over a matter of months. Worster has also written a fine biography of the explorer John Wesley Powell, among other books. He captures Muir the man with economy and grace, and gives the reader a clear sense of his public stature: We are reaching a point where Nature is no longer considered just a storehouse of economic resources, Worster argues, but "a value in itself. No one in nineteenth-century America was more important than Muir in persuading people to move toward such a vision."
Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Review
Fine biography. Ken Worpole, The Independent The epic biography of an epic life. Paul Evans, BBC Wildlife Magnificent biography. Donald Worster, Saga Highly readable biography. Mark Cocker, The Guardian Thorough and detailed. Fordyce Maxwell, Scotland on Sunday Comprehensive biography. Jared Farmer, Science

Customer Reviews

Wildness in His Blood
Here, Donald Worster has delivered the most extensive and well-researched biography to date on the great conservationist John Muir. There are already several biographies on Muir available, not to mention his own partial autobiography. But here Worster digs deeply into Muir's personal correspondence, published and unpublished journals, and other period sources to place Muir in the social and political context of his times. Worster intertwines his biographical research with an engaging history of the conservation movement, Muir's complex relationship with it, and his enduring influence on it. And more than any previous biographer, Worster has conducted research into one crucial aspect of Muir's life - the evolution of Muir's religious beliefs and the integration of his complex belief system into the type of conservationist philosophy that he invented almost singlehandedly. Worster also delivers robust information on Muir's progress as a journalist and author later in life and how he pretty much invented grassroots environmentalism in his last battle - the unsuccessful fight against the Hetch Hetchy dam.

John Muir is deservedly revered for introducing his fellow Americans to the spiritual fulfillment to be found in natural beauty, as well as founding conservation as we know it today. But as expertly illustrated by Wortser herein, Muir was also a very deep thinker and spiritualist with a complex belief system built during a lifetime of outdoor sojourns and philosophical inspection. This more intricate side of his personality shines through in this biography, and Worster's book will soon be acknowledged as the definitive work on John Muir, his outdoor achievements, and his enduring philosophy of natural appreciation. [~doomsdayer520~]

Definitive Biography of Muir
Well done. Thorough. An overview that has been long in need. A nice addition to all my other Muir books (including original first editions with dust covers). We have much to learn from Muir in his personal and public life.

wonderful biography
This beautifully written biography tells the life story of John Muir, one of the first American environmentalists and the founder of the Sierra Club. The use of Muir's private letters and drawings makes the book come alive.

It's a perfect book for anyone interested in nature!