"The record of Muir's life that Worster has scrupulously assembled, fascinating in its own right, takes on added significance as Worster sets it in context."--New York Times Book Review
"An excellent new biography of John Muir..."--New York Review of Books
"With this splendid biography, Donald Worster...reminds us of the debt we owe John Muir... Mr. Worster's meticulous research and fluid writing style make A Passion for Nature a model of biography."--Dallas Morning News
"John Muir's battles to preserve the Sierra Nevada and Yosemite Park, his founding of the Sierra Club, his final, bitter, unsuccessful effort to save Hetch Hetchy Valley, his pioneering insights into the geology of the glacial age, and his late Victorian combination of religion and pantheism have been extensively chronicled. What is unique about A Passion for Nature is the skill with which Worster places Muir in a political context. Worster helps us understand how the love of nature is related to other social movements for equality, that human indifference to the natural world is morally an example of the oppressive hierarchies that mar our history." --Carl Pope, Executive Director, Sierra Club
"Donald Worster's A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir is an engagingly written, adroitly balanced appraisal that places its subject within the emerging environmental consciousness of the late 19th century. Drawing on a host of letters and journals, Worster, a highly regarded historian of environmental movements, composes a complete and completely appealing picture of a more complicated man than we thought we knew."--Boston Globe
"A towering biography of a towering figure! John Muir is one of those very few Americans who reshaped the way we saw the world. This volume, from one of our most eminent historians, makes clear both the sources and the meaning of Muir's great and wild epiphany." --Bill McKibben, author of The Bill McKibben Reader
"...this marvelously fluent portrait of the man who sought to establish 'an ethic of environmental restraint' a century ago and whose powerful arguments still hold."--Booklist
"Competently documented, this all-inclusive biography explains the life and times of a figure known to all who love nature and will appeal to general readers and anyone interested in the early roots of today's green movement and its founding fathers."--Library Journal
"Comprehensive, measured, deeply sympathetic and well balanced, it is nevertheless provocative, and a great read to boot."--San Francisco Chronicle Review
"A magnificent account of one of the principal leaders of the environmental movement in America. This is an engaging and eautifully written story that illumines the broader sources and challenges of Muir's passion for nature." --Mary Evelyn Tucker, Yale University
"As far as the American environment is concerned, few figures have wielded more influence than John Muir. How appropriate, then, that one of Americas most noted environmental historians, Donald Worster, should now present John Muir in all his complexity and achievement in this authoritative and lively biography." --Kevin Starr, University of Southern California
"A Passion for Nature is an excellent, readable, engaging piece of scholarship that should now be considered the definitive biography of one of America's most influential advocates for nature."--American Scientist
"America has had no more passionate defender of wild nature than John Muir, and there is no more passionate chronicler of the nations environmental past than Donald Worster. We are lucky that so insightful and eloquent a scholar has now produced a biography of Muir that will surely be regarded as a benchmark for many years to come." --William Cronon, University of Wisconsin-Madison
"Few scholars could be better qualified than Worster to assess John Muir's place in American environmental tradition...Worster brilliantly recreates Muir and his world in all their complexity." -- Jackson Lears, The New Republic
"Sierra Club founder John Muir has inspired many books over the years, but this biography stands out as a scholarly yet readable, approach..." -- The Green Life (Sierra Club blog)
"Readers of Worster's subtle, layered biography of Muir would do well to turn its pages slowly and perhaps perambulate for a few minutes at the end of each chapter...As I savored this book over several days...I became convinced of Worster's wisdom, embodied by his decision to let the story of Muir's tangled life - especially his personal life - suggest the complexity of both the author's and his subject's 'passion for nature.' " -- Aaron Sachs, American Historical Review
"A Passion for Nature supplants all earlier Muir biographies and will undoubtedly stand the test of time for its sophisticated interpretations and impressive narrative power. Worster manages to breathe life into the well-worn Muir story, a tribute to his considerable skill as a writer and historian. This book is a pleasure to read."--Journal of American History
