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| Wilderness and the American Mind, Fourth Edition | 
| Author: Roderick Nash
Publisher: Yale University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $18.00
Buy Used: $7.99
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New (39) from $9.90
Avg. Customer Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 70903
Media: Paperback
Edition: 4 Sub
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 426
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 4.9 x 1.3
ISBN: 0300091222
Dewey Decimal Number: 973
EAN: 9780300091229
ASIN: 0300091222
Publication Date: September 1, 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: nice covers and clean pages and light creases on top edge
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| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
 The Great American Land Debate November 3, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Nash chronicles American attitudes toward their country's wild places in hopes of answering the big question: What role does thou unspoiled, unaltered, natural place serve in our society? As I read Wilderness & the American Mind, I found not only is this answer politically & emotionally charged as say the question of creation versus evolution, but the answer changes depending on where and when you ask it.
The book masterfully depicts the dramatic periods of change in the American psyche about nature and wild places. Nash brings all the reference and research of a disciplined historian to bear, but always manages to keep you interested. He creates an engaging read by calling on the most influential players and the most controversial settings of the American "environmental movement." We get treated to chapters on Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Aldo Leopold along with a supporting cast of characters like Teddy Roosevelt, Edward Abbey, and David Brower (Oh, let's not forgot the feds.) The settings, just as tasty, depict the epic battles for preserving Little Yosemite Valley (aka Hetch Hetchy), the Colorado River, and of course, the congressional battle to preserve a major chunk of Alaskan wilderness from development.
After I read this book, I noticed all the pages I dog-eared; this book is bejeweled with great quotes! Nash brings us the thought-shapers, but gives them their voice. I'll leave you with on of many outstanding quotes. This one compliments of Aldo Leopold:
Shallow-minded modern man... who prates of empires, political and economic" lacked the humility to perceive this truth. "It is only the scholar who appreciates that all history consists of successive excursions from a single starting-point, to which man returns again and again to organize yet another search for a durable scale of values." This initial bedrock was "raw wilderness." To posses it he thought, but most importantly to understand it ecologically as well as aesthetically, was the key to health--of land and also of culture.
 Wilderness and the American Mind October 13, 2007
This book is about the origins of the wilderness preservation movement. Apparently it began as a doctoral dissertation and has been layered over and revised in subsequent publications since 1967. Whatever its original focus was, the bulk of the current version is concerned with the politics of wilderness preservation in America. This is hardly a book about how Americans have explored, experienced, or lived adventurously in the wilderness. Nor is it chiefly about the tension between civilization and nature. There is some of all of that in the early chapters, but the discussion there is more of an overview and so lacks detail and depth. In later chapters the writing often descends into journalistic reporting of tedious minutia. This will delight some readers and tire others.
When I read this in 1974, I wish I had had it in 1969/70 July 22, 2006
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
While not a perfect book, this is one of the few books I know which I would call "required reading" for people in the environmental movement and ecology. It's not a science book, which is one of my minor problems with it, but I titled this review comment with my opinion prior to taking the first of 2 classes (1974) by one of Nash's student colleagues and then Nash himself. I, and a slew of my colleagues in 1970 really needed to have read this during the organization and preparation for what was then termed "The First Environmental Teach-In" now called ridiculously "Earth Day."
I felt this way in 1974, because I could see that we had retrod ground done by Brower 2 decades earlier and Muir seven decades. And then I learned of names I had never heard before like G. Pinchot and the roles of people like John Wesley Powell independent of the Grand Canyon survey and Stephen Mather and the Natl. Park PR machine (not all bad). This book is part of why students are supposed to take history classes.
The 2nd ed (pub. 1973)., which I had and still have, covered events I lived and can confirmed happened. That's toward the end of the book. The beginning of the book are about pre-American precursors in Europe such as the Romantic movement and various humanist issues like painting and writing. Some of these parts were were a little slow for me (I did read Rousseau), but it did put the Black Forest in perspective more than a type of cake. And that helps with understanding forestry schools.
Nash is good in showing the development of the conservation movement (incl. soil reclamation and forestry [and why hunters and fishers are conservationists]) to the shortcoming of conservation and the start of preservation (Muir, Mather), and the latter shortcomings of "loving wilderness to death" and the rise of environmentalism and ecological biology (Nash likes Leopold, I prefer Rachel Carson, we agree on reading Ed Abbey).
Rod is good at tying together art, literature (here your transcendalists in American Literature come in), popular culture (recreation), religion (See his Rights of Nature book for more depth), and science (barely). He has a good bibliography, one of the finest that I have seen if you want more depth and references, but the field is pretty vast and Nash's text is already thick so his survey is at best described as shallow (supplementary reading like Doug Strong's The Conservationists helps).
Alaska in the 3rd ed. is important to the future. I have been given by Rod in the past "seed" copies, and I purchase "Wilderness" as gifts. I stopped doing that until recently when I was surprised a bio prof friend was unaware. I know he will enjoy reading "Would you flood the Sistine Chapel to get closer to the ceiling?"
I wish that Gaylord Nelson (then Sen., Wisc.) had had us read this book. I think that we would have gone further on that day in 1970. The book is just a shadow of the class experience, I leave lots of book detail out in this review/summary.
Wilderness: One of America's Most Important Ideas December 26, 2005
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
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.
Not perfect but still a classic thanks to regular updating July 8, 2005
8 out of 10 found this review helpful
As the other reviews will confirm, this is a classic book on the American concept of wilderness. Nash wrote the first version in the 1960s, originally as his dissertation. The main narrative has held up well. Nash has also put the text through regular revisions, so it lacks any embarrassingly outdated claims that might detract from the book.
The first part of the book is an intellectual history of "wilderness." Wilderness may exist as a state of mind or as the product of an intellectual movement (as in Nash). This kind of analysis is invariably subjective and selective. Nash, like others engaged in this kind of history, draws from a subset of all the people who wrote on the topic at a given moment (and, as he recognizes, necessarily leaves out the views of people who don't write them down). Then, like others, he organizes this material, calling it a "Romantic" view of wilderness or whatever.
I find such exercises interesting but generally unpersuasive by their very nature. For example, Nash interprets the Bible and other foundational texts for Western civilization as embodying a "subdue the wilderness" ethos. Fine. But what of Jesus' reference to the "lilies of the field"? Certainly that implies a valuation of nature as beautiful and worthy in itself - - "Romantic," perhaps. My point is that anyone can always do this, and any intellectual history can always be criticized for leaving things out and thus mischaracterizing what it discusses.
That said, Nash is not too objectionable on that front. In fact, his categorization is helpful, and would be especially good as an introduction to these ideas. This is doubtless why this book is used in so many undergraduate ecology courses.
The second part of the book focuses on various battles over wilderness. Here he moves closer to a straight history. His narrative is forceful and engrossing.
The last chapter, on international issues, is really too superficial to be useful. It leaves the impression that he is trying to be complete with each new edition, without really having fresh insights into the subject.
Overall, the book is very well-written and easy to read - - I classify it as the kind of book that is good to read on an airplane (which is in fact where I read it).
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