John Muir
1) The Yosemite
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John Muir, famous for his naturalist essays and books, was over 70 years old when he wrote "The Yosemite" as a reflection on the beauty of the national park. Muir was a naturalist, so he was highly invested in describing the landscape, flora, and fauna of Yosemite National Park. He even said that "no temple with manmade hands can compare with Yosemite." Muir knew the terrain well, having hiked and climbed Cathedral Peak, Mount Dana, and the old Indian...
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John Muir (1838-1914) ranks among America's most important and influential environmentalists and nature writers. Devoted to the preservation of wilderness areas, Muir founded the Sierra Club and was active in the establishment of Yosemite National Park. Our National Parks, originally published in 1901, includes ten articles that previously appeared in The Atlantic Monthly. Muir wrote them in hopes of exciting interest in the parks, certain that visitors...
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Scottish-born naturalist and writer John Muir undertook a daring adventure in 1867, just a few years after the Civil War. After recovering from an injury at a saw mill, Muir decided that he wanted to explore the world. He left his life in Indiana and walked one thousand miles to Florida. Without any real direction or purpose other than to study the flora and fauna, Muir trekked south through Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida...
4) Stickeen
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First published as "An Adventure with a Dog and a Glacier" in 1897 in "The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine" and then expanded into a book and published in 1909, "Stickeen" by American naturalist John Muir is one of literature's most enduring dog stories. Based on a trip he took to Alaska in 1880 with a dog Stickeen and their trek out on a glacier, this short memoir is one of Muir's best-known publications whose enduring appeal has resulted in...
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When he came to California and finally settled in San Francisco, John Muir immediately left for a visit to Yosemite, a place he had only read about. Seeing it for the first time, Muir noted that "He was overwhelmed by the landscape, scrambling down steep cliff faces to get a closer look at the waterfalls, whooping and howling at the vistas, jumping tirelessly from flower to flower." He climbed a number of mountains, including Cathedral Peak and Mount...
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As a student at the University of Wisconsin, John Muir often visited with Dr. Ezra Carr and his family, and the impressionable young man came to regard Mrs. Carr as his spiritual mother. A keen botanist, she shared Muir's passion for nature, and the two formed a lasting bond. After heading west to explore the wonders of Yosemite, the future founder of the Sierra Club and wilderness preservationist wrote many heartfelt letters to Mrs. Carr. In his...
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Essayist. Preservationist. Mountain man. Inventor. John Muir may be California's best-known icon. A literary naturalist and founder of the Sierra Club and Yosemite National Park, Muir left his legacy on the landscape and on paper. But the celebrity of John Muir does not tell the whole story. In Essential Muir, for the first time, Muir's selected writings include those that show his ecological vision without ignoring his racism, providing a more complete...
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At the age of 29, naturalist John Muir set out alone for a long hike through the rural American South in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War. This volume chronicles his path from Indiana across Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida to the Gulf of Mexico. Muir chose the "wildest, leafiest, and least trodden way I could find," sketching plants along the way and recording his delighted encounters with Spanish moss, palmettos,...
11) Steep Trails
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Said the New York Times in its review of this posthumously published 1919 collection of Muir's essays and letters: "To read this book is like going on a joyous holiday through the most picturesque parts of America with a man to whom nature is as close and vivid a presence as it is to a great poet."
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Introduced by Graham White.
When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. John Muir, My First Summer in the SierraThe name of John Muir has come to stand for the protection of wild land and wilderness in both America and Britain. Born in Dunbar in 1838, Muir is famed as the father of American conservation. This collection, including the rarely seen Stickeen, presents the finest of Muir’s writings,...
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This heartwarming and hair-raising "icy-storm story," published in 1909, recounts Muir's Alaskan adventures in 1880 with his little black dog named Stickeen-an animal that Muir initially views with scorn but comes to regard with the greatest affection following a near-death experience on a frozen glacier.
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John Muir agreed in 1881 to sail aboard the Corwin, whose fruitless mission it was to search for the missing scientific research vessel Jeannette, which itself became icebound while exploring the distant and mysterious Wrangell Land in the higher latitudes of the Arctic. This cruise would afford Muir the opportunity to examine evidence of glaciation along the arctic coastlines of Siberia and Alaska and the harmonious lifestyle of Inuits and Chukchis,...
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In this essay, Muir tells his experience of climbing to the top of a tree and riding it for hours through a wild Sierra storm. As he writes, "the danger to life and limb is hardly greater than one would experience crouching deprecatingly beneath a roof." This selection is part of the full length audiobook, "Storm: Stories of Survival From Land and Sea."
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Horror Films FAQ explores a century of ghoulish and grand horror cinema, gazing at the different characters, situations, settings, and themes featured in the horror film, from final girls, monstrous bogeymen, giant monsters and vampires to the recent torture porn and found footage formats. The book remembers the J-Horror remake trend of the 2000s, and examines the oft-repeated slasher format popularized by John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) and Friday...
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In the year 2002, An Askew View: The Films of Kevin Smith was the first book to gaze at the cinema of one of New Jersey's favorite sons, the independent and controversial auteur of Clerks (1994), Mallrats (1995), Chasing Amy (1997), Dogma (1999) and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001). Now, a full decade after that successful original edition, award-winning author John Kenneth Muir returns to the View Askewniverse to consider Kevin Smith's second...
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In 1984, four comedians - Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Rob Reiner, and Harry Shearer - unleashed This Is Spinal Tap, the world's first "mock-rockumentary" and a joke that has lasted into the 21st century and inspired a generation of imitations. Now, award-winning film journalist John Kenneth Muir (An Askew View: The Films of Kevin Smith) escorts the reader through a quarter-century of heavy metal laughs, offering a detailed history of the film's...
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Providing a career-spanning view of everyone's favorite geek writer and director, Joss Whedon FAQ offers answers to fans' questions about one of the most significant pop culture auteurs of the past twenty-five years. The book gazes at Whedon's early work in Hollywood as a script doctor on films such “The Quick and the Dead” (1995) and “Waterworld” (1995), and follows his career as he became the cult-favorite creator of such sensations as “Buffy...
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In the summer of 1984, a small, low-budget film came out of nowhere and unexpectedly debuted at the number one slot at the box office, unseating reigning champion Ghostbusters and making its star, Prince, a household name. By the end of the year, the film was a multiple-award winner, a trend setter in terms of fashion, and recognized on many prominent critical "top ten" lists. Purple Rain: Music on Film explores in detail the behind-the-scenes struggles...