ENTERTAINMENT

In a journal entry, John Muir wrote, "There is love of wild nature in everybody." That belief was at the heart of the conservation movement that Muir was instrumental in making a significant force in American life.

With this splendid biography, Donald Worster, a professor at the University of Kansas, reminds us of the debt we owe John Muir. America might not have its national park system had it not been for Mr. Muir's dogged insistence that California's sequoias and places such as Yosemite be treated as essential elements of our national heritage.

Library of Congress

John Muir (right) and Theodore Roosevelt at Yosemite's Glacier Point in 1903. Mr. Muir used his celebrity to recruit high-profile supporters for his conservation efforts.

Mr. Worster writes that Mr. Muir was "a trusting child of nature and a prophet of hope for humanity." He was also a complex man who understood the political and economic realities that had to be addressed by those committed to preserving natural resources. Dams had to be built so cities would have water; timber had to be harvested so people could have houses. But there also had to be limits on growth, and sanctuaries for nature's beauty had to be made secure from encroachments of avarice.

Mr. Worster's meticulous research and fluid writing style make A Passion for Nature a model of biography. He clearly has great affection and respect for Mr. Muir and his work, but he is crisply objective in his analysis of Mr. Muir's tendency to procrastinate (especially in his writing projects) and to sometimes underestimate the tenacity of his political opponents.

Mr. Muir founded the Sierra Club and used his celebrity to recruit high-profile supporters for his conservation efforts. He recognized the value to his cause of being a very public person, so he could "entice people to look at nature's loveliness."

Nevertheless, his fundamental commitment to conservation was grounded in a personal spiritual philosophy. Mr. Worster writes that during his early visits to the California Sierras, Mr. Muir experienced "a profound conversion to the religion of nature." As he looked at waterfalls and spruce trees and watched chipmunks and grasshoppers, Mr. Muir reflected, "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe." And he wrote of Yosemite, "Here we may most easily see God."

Mr. Worster cites Mr. Muir's belief that understanding a world that humans had not made "should induce a greater sense of humility among humankind." Mr. Muir accomplished great things, but he was not able to ensure that such humility would become a lasting part of our national character and help to protect the natural world that he so revered.

Philip Seib is a professor of journalism and public diplomacy at the University of Southern California.

A Passion

for Nature

The Life of John Muir

Donald Worster

(Oxford University Press, $34.95)