Driven Wild: How the Fight Against Automobiles Launched the Modern Wilderness Movement

Description

Author: Sutter, Paul S.  (1965-)

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Pub Date: 2002

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Book: Fair.  Binding tight.  No tears, bends, folds.  Warmly inscrribed by the author on title page to previous owner.  Highlighting throughout.  Some marginalia.  Light edge and corner wear.  Dust Jacket: Fair.  NOT price clipped (price included in ISBN label on lower rear cover).   Some edge and corner wear.  Wear and wrinkling to spine head.

Notes: Wilderness meets the automobile.  In the early 20th century small groups of outdoor enthusiasts saw the increasing dominance of the automobile as a threat to the wilderness.  Between World Wars I and II, the CCC constructed hundreds of miles of roads, cabins, campgrounds, and facilities for public use, all to be available to the motoring public.  By 1964, with the adoption of the Wilderness Act, the government recognized the need for “wilderness” (think “roadlessness”), and “…the movement to protect wild land reflected a growing belief among many conservationists that the modern forces of capitalism, industrialism, urbanism, and mass consumer culture were gradually eroding not just the ecology of North America, but crucial American values as well.  For them, wilderness stood for something deeply sacred that was in danger of being lost, so that the movement to protect it was about saving not just wild nature, but ourselves as well.”  (From the Foreword).  From the library of the late environmentalist Dave Foreman, inscribed to him by the author.