Ocean State Libraries

Robert Sullivan, the New York Times bestselling author of Rats and Cross Country, delivers a revolutionary reconsideration of Henry David Thoreau for modern readers of the seminal transcendentalist. Dispelling common notions of Thoreau as a lonely eccentric cloistered at Walden Pond, Sullivan (whom the New York Times Book Review calls "an urban Thoreau") paints a dynamic picture of Thoreau as the naturalist who founded our American ideal of "the Great...

Introduces the life of John Muir, the naturalist who formed the Sierra Club to help preserve the Sierra Mountains.

Extraordinary environments endure through the efforts of conservationists such as John Muir. In this engaging biography, readers will learn about Muir's childhood in Scotland, his early love of nature, his education in Wisconsin, and the extensive travels that led him to California, where he established that Yosemite Valley was created by glaciers. Readers will discover Muir's influential friendships with conservationist John Burroughs, naturalist...

"In the exploding world of citizen science, hundreds of thousands of volunteers are monitoring climate change, tracking bird migration, and following their bliss counting stardust for NASA or excavating mastodons. The sheer number of citizen scientists, combined with new technology, has begun to shape how research is conducted. Non-professionals become acknowledged experts: dentists turn into astronomers and accountants into botanists. Diary of a...

Offers a view of Thoreau's life and his extraordinary achievement in their nineteenth-century context.

A biography of John Muir revealing the events and ideas that shaped America's pioneer conservationist and founder of the Sierra Club.