In a lifetime of exploration, writing, and passionate political activism, John Muir made himself America’s most eloquent spokesperson for the mystery and majesty of wilderness, a master of natural description who evoked and celebrated the untrammeled landscapes of the American West. My First Summer in the Sierra, Muir’s seminal account of his first extended trip to the Sierra Nevada in what is now Yosemite National Park, is joined here by thirteen essays further detailing the wonder and fragility of California’s natural environment and his path-breaking efforts to preserve it. In the introduction for this edition, Bill McKibben writes, “When we consider John Muir, we consider one of the small handful of Americans who truly changed the world.”

Bill McKibben is the author of Earth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, The End of Nature, Deep Economy, The Bill McKibben Reader, and numerous other books. He edited American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau for The Library of America. He is the founder of the environmental organizations Step It Up and 350.org and a scholar in residence at Middlebury College and lives in Vermont.