John Muir's Last Journey : South To The Amazon And East To Africa: Unpublished Journals And Selected Correspondence

central Africa to the headwaters of the Nile, and across six oceans and seas in order to reach the rare forests he had so long wished to study. Although this epic journey has received almost no attention from the many commentators on Muirs work, Muir himself considered it among the most important of his life and the fulfillment of a decades-long dream.John Muirs Last Journey provides a rare glimpse of a Muir whose interests as a naturalist, traveler, and conservationist extended well beyond the mountains of California. It also helps us to see John Muir as a different kind of hero, one whose endurance and intellectual curiosity carried him into far fields of adventure even as he aged, and as a private person and family man with genuine affections, ambitions, and fears, not just an iconic representative of American wilderness. With an introduction that sets Muirs trip in the context of his life and work, along with chapter introductions and a wealth of explanatory notes, the book adds important dimensions to

our appreciation of one of Americas greatest environmentalists. John Muirs Last Journey is a must reading for students and scholars of environmental history, American literature, natural history, and related fields, as well as for naturalists and armchair travelers everywhere. [Publisher's text]