"In God's wilds," John Muir found beauty, inspiration, and the courage
to battle governmental powers for the preservation of natural
landscapes. In his writing and his activism as the founding president
of the Sierra Club, countless others have also found a call to enjoy
and preserve the natural world.

    Muir, still one of the most popular American nature writers, was
instrumental in the creation of Yosemite National Park and other
western parks. For years, environmentalists have used him as a
bellwether for their objectives, making him into a wilderness man, a
pantheist, and an ascetic. In God's Wilds, Dennis C. Williams,
unlike other interpreters, suggests that Muir's ambition to save nature
from development emerged out of his commitment to nineteenth-century
evangelical Christian theology.

    Muir embodied the uneasy elationship of metaphysics and natural
science of his time. It is the melding of these two visions, Williams
suggests, that continues to make his work appealing and gives it
power to fuel environmental activism and an appreciation of the value
of nature and the environment in the modern world.

_________________________________________________________

DENNIS C. WILLIAMS is an associate professor and chair of the
Department of History at Southern Nazarene University. He lives in
Bethany, Oklahoma.


Number Eighteen: Environmental History Series

What people are saying about this book


". . . covers the turf in a direct kind of detail that is thoughtful and
powerful, and it revises an important historical figure."—Hal K.
Rothman