Essential Muir: A Selection of John Muir’s Best Writings

This is a book for nature lovers. Muir is an intriguing weirdo! The best of weirdos! He lived life to the fullest. He meticulously chose a life off normal path.

I bought this as used lime new, but it came with a lot of highlighting.

A mere selection from Muir cannot help but be missing something valuable, but the reader gets a clear sense of the shape of Muir's career, and some great moments are here: riding out a storm in a swaying tree, finding an extra awareness and ability when facing death climbing up a mountain chimney, and the classic dog versus glacier story, Stickeen.

I read some of Muir's works years ago and thoroughly enjoyed them. I purchased this book as a gift to a friend who is just going into the Environmental Sciences as a career. It's a great way to look at the philosophy that drives much of the modern conservation movement. I would also recommend something by Gifford Pinchot as an equally respected early conservationist and writer that offered a different perspective,

This is such a wonderful introduction to the writings of John Muir. I'd highly recommend it for anyone who enjoys and appreciates the natural resources and landscapes of the United States. I loved how it balanced his time our west (which he is probably best known for) with his earlier writings and ventures back east. It is very encouraging to see where he came from and how he stayed true to his passions.

While Muir does a good job of describing his natural surroundings, and he can certainly bring you along with him, he tends to overdo his Latin plant names, which results in more of a biologist's notes feel to his writing than the poetical, high-blown descriptions that I expected. He tends to be over-reliant on his favorite adjective ("glorious") instead of following Conrad's great dictate for writers (to make you see).

This selection is useful if looking for brief pieces and I am. So the book is good for me, while for others it could be a problem.

We're getting ready to hike the JMT and wanted to know a little about John Muir. This book is a great overview. Now, we want to get all the books included in this selection.

John Muir was born in 1838 in Scotland and spent his formative years in Wisconsin, where his family emigrated. His writings are better known in the USA. He died in 1914. This selection of essays were chosen by Fred D. White who describes Muir's legacy as complex and important. Muir led a remarkable life and spent much of his solitary life in Yosemite. Muir had a fierce love of all of nature, from squirrels to glaciers. He once described himself as a "poetico-trampo-geologist-botanist and ornithologist-naturalist". A rather whimsical description but one that does rather sum up his desire to fuse rational and investigative sensibilities with aesthetic and spiritual ideas.Read here about his faithful companion Stikeen (his dog), his reflections on the society of Eskimos and his touching tribute to the mighty baobob trees of Africa. Writings that inspire us more than a century after his death.

Too much autobiography - lifted directly from his journals. Not enough of the quality prose that made him famous. The chapter on the wind storm was excellent. The chapter on the glaciers was...um...slower than molasses in January.

Far beyond what I expected from my distant relative. He is not only a great raconteur but is calming and thoughtful at the same time.Highly recommended.

Um ótimo livro de um espetacular pensador

Excellent read. Enjoyed it thoroughly.