Wilderness and the American Mind [Paperback]

Roderick Frazier Nash (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2001

Roderick Nash's classic study of America's changing attitudes toward wilderness has received wide acclaim since its initial publication in 1967. The Los Angeles Times has listed it among the one hundred most influential books published in the last quarter century, Outside Magazine has included it in a survey of "books that changed our world", and it has been called the "Book of Genesis for environmentalists". Now a fourth edition of this highly regarded work is available, with a new preface and epilogue in which Nash explores the future of wilderness and reflects on its ethical and biocentric relevance.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A peerless work and irreplaceable for everyone who cares for Nature." -- Dave Foreman, Chairman, Wildlands Project

"One of those rare works that combines exemplary scholarship with readability." -- Washington Post Book World

About the Author

Roderick Frazier Nash is professor emeritus of history and environmental studies at the University of California Santa Barbara.

Product Details

• Paperback: 426 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; 4th edition (September 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300091222
• ISBN-13: 978-0300091229
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,862 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #4 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Biological Sciences > Animals > Wildlife
  • #20 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Earth Sciences > Environmental Science
  • #26 in Books > Science & Math > Nature & Ecology > Conservation

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

60 of 65 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Still the best introduction to American ideas about nature, July 16, 2002

By 

Robert Moore (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Wilderness and the American Mind (Paperback)

For a few decades now, Roderick Nash's WILDERNESS AND THE AMERICAN MIND in its various editions has been perhaps the best all around introduction to the history of American attitudes towards nature and about what makes these attitudes unique in world culture. All editions have covered the greater story, beginning with the early attitudes towards wilderness in colonial times, in which nature was viewed primarily in terms of the use to which it could be put and a sense of human responsibility to transform it for human use. Nash then shows how American ideas towards nature gradually altered through the thought of individuals inspired by Romanticism, in particular Emerson and Thoreau. He then describes how Americans moved from a view of nature as possessing value only to the degree to which it can be put to use, to a view of wilderness having intrinsic value entirely on its own. All the major events in American environmental history are covered, from the popularization of wilderness through painters such as Cole, Bierstadt, and Moran, to the work and influence of John Muir, through the creation of the national park and forest system, to the work of 20th century figures such as Aldo Leopold. The book makes all-in-all a fascinating read, and anyone wanting to learn about

In particular, Nash shows how the view of undeveloped wilderness as something possessing intrinsic value worth preserving in an undeveloped state is a uniquely American idea, and one of the great intellectual contributions to world thought. Today, a large number of countries have followed America's lead in establishing national parks and wildlife preserves. All over the world, the notion of wilderness and nature possessing value apart from what human activity imparts to it is commonplace.

For anyone wanting to go beyond Nash's book to read more deeply on the various topics covered will find Nash's Bibliographic Essay to be almost as valuable as the book itself. Nash is an obvious bibliophile, and he provides a rich and varied introduction to every aspect of his subject. After reading this book for the first time, I read a large number of books suggested by Nash in his essay. I later offered some continuing education classes at the University of Chicago on environmental ethics, a subject about which I learned primarily by working from Nash's bibliography. The ongoing value of this book has been enhanced by the recent fourth edition, which has not only added a new preface but has extensively updated the bibliography. I cannot recommend this book highly enough for anyone even remotely interested in American or environmental history.

Best of all, this book, while impeccable in its academic credentials, is never less than utterly fun and delightfully readable. Definitely not for scholars and students alone.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wilderness: One of America's Most Important Ideas, December 26, 2005

By 

Martin H. Dickinson "Walker in the woods, dis... (Washington, D.C.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Wilderness and the American Mind (Paperback)

Those who have been so quick to pronounce the "death" of environmentalism surely have not taken Roderick Frazier Nash's Wilderness and the American Mind into account. With roots in European Romanticism, and blossoming in mid-19th Century writings of Thoreau and Emerson, the idea of wilderness is one of the most important ideas America has contributed to the world.

The wilderness idea has no abler chronicler than Roderick Nash, whitewater rafting guide, adventurer, descendent of Canadian explorers and professor emeritus of environmental studies, who first published this book in 1967 and has taken it through four editions. His entertaining narrative covers the life of Muir and the early preservation struggles of The Sierra Club. He provides special insight into Aldo Leopold and sets the whole discussion of Leopold's land ethic in its historical context.

While wilderness is everywhere under assault, many still understand the continuing need to preserve our wilderness system, a network of wild areas free from all other human activities. In fact, it's difficult to come away from Nash's book without understanding that wilderness is an intrinsic American value.

The most articulate advocate of wilderness was Theodore Roosevelt, who believed the modern American was in danger of becoming an "overcivilized" man, who has lost strength and higher virtue in a trend toward "slothful ease." Nash gives great credit to Roosevelt and shows how his ideas and experiences contributed to later 20th Century concepts of environmental preservation.

America, according to Roosevelt, needed to preserve the remnants of the pioneer environment because, "no nation facing the unhealthy softening and relaxation of fibre that tends to accompany civilization can afford to neglect anything that will develop hardihood, resolution, and the scorn of discomfort and danger."

Wilderness evokes deep sentiments in the mystic chords of American memory. It is not merely a political movement thought up in the 1960s--a trend that will fade as baby boomers age and our present generation of environmental leaders moves on. Nash shows us how wilderness came to be that way and suggests the wilderness idea is likely to endure at the vital center of our national psyche.

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A classic for any environmentalist's library, September 23, 2001

By 

Puncturevine (Great American Desert, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Wilderness and the American Mind (Paperback)

I stumbled across this book in the course of some research on the so-called "Greening of American Religion," ie the reinterpretation of the Bible and other religious works to more appreciate, rather than vilify, the non-human environment. As Nash thoroughly documents in the first chapters of this book, Christianity (or at least American elements of it) certainly bears a heavy cross when it comes to environmental destruction in America. After reading Nash, someone is going to have to do some real creative reinterpretation to convince me that the Bible does not say what generations of Americans have understood it to say: the earth was made for man, and man has every right to control and manage it to his ends, part of which means conquering and "civilizing" wilderness and everything within it. These early chapters are important, because it constructs the anti-wilderness mindset that so thoroughly dominated early American (world?) history (and for that matter continues to influence the thought of millions of Americans). Subsequent chapters chronicle how some Americans-initially only lone voices like Thoreau and Muir-rejected this view and developed the idea of wilderness we generally accept today within the preservationist movement. In the process Nash explores competing "environmentalist" theories such as the "wise use" (conservationist) leanings of Pinchot and TR Roosevelt and the surprising beginnings of some of our contemporary "environmentalist" legislation (e.g. forest reserve system). Later chapters focus on the Hetch-Hetchy controversy and Leopold. As such this book serves as a very readable and well-constructed general history of American environmentalism, a book any "environmentalist" (regardless of how you define that term) should read. As another reviewer notes, some of the scholarship needs to be updated (e.g. the apocryphal "campfire chat" of the "founders" of Yellowstone NP that likely never took place, as discussed in Schullery's recent history of Yellowstone). But overall an excellent resource, one you'll want on your bookshelf if for no other reason than the copious quotes sprinkled throughout the text used to support Nash's arguments. My favorite (from Lord Byron's Manfred: A Dramatic Poem (London 1817)):

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods
There is a rapture on the lonely shore
There is a society where none intrudes
I love not the man less, but nature more.