Ten years ago, The Great New Wilderness Debate began a cross-disciplinary conversation about the varied constructions of "wilderness" and the controversies that surround them. The Wilderness Debate Rages On will reinvigorate that conversation and usher in a second decade of debate. Like its predecessor, the book gathers both critiques and defenses of the idea of wilderness from a wide variety of perspectives and voices. The Wilderness Debate Rages On includes the best explorations of the concept of the concept of wilderness from the past decade, underappreciated essays from the early twentieth century that offer an alternative vision of the concept and importance of wilderness, and writings meant to clarify or help us rethink the concept of wilderness. Narrative writers such as Wendell Berry, Scott Russell Sanders, Marilynne Robinson, Kathleen Dean Moore, and Lynn Maria Laitala are also given a voice in order to show how the wilderness debate is expanding outside the academy. The writers represented in the anthology include ecologists, environmental philosophers, conservation biologists, cultural geographers, and environmental activists. The book begins with little-known papers by early twentieth-century ecologists advocating the preservation of natural areas for scientific study, not, as did Thoreau, Muir, and the early Leopold, for purposes of outdoor recreation. The editors argue that had these writers influenced the eventual development of federal wilderness policy, our national wilderness system would better serve contemporary conservation priorities for representative ecosystems and biodiversity.

Birth of a nation. Growth of a nation. "From a Wilderness" is an anthology of four adventure novels rooted in a carefully researched history of the times. The first story begins at Jamestown as a man named Jonathan Strong watches with fascination as a cartwheeling Pocahontas leads a troop of English boys gleefully imitating her. In the second story, the setting shifts from Virginia to another place where newly arrived Europeans struggled against unforgiving terrain: the New England of the Puritans. It draws up a vivid reminder of the imprint that the Puritans stamped onto the American character. Next is an unexpectedly fascinating story that traces the profound influence of Adam Smith's role in molding the American economy and its values. And finally, the fourth novel is the story of the greatest real estate transaction in history, the Louisiana Purchase, told through the lives of two brothers whose clash could decide the fate of the young United States of America. For lovers of history, "From a Wilderness "will be an irresistible delight, a carefully researched saga that gives detail and color to the defining moments of a nation coming to be. For anyone who loves a great story, these four tales bring you into the world of man against environment, life in the frontier, noblemen, "savages," intrepid explorers, braggarts, liars, cowards, cowboys and Indians, good guys and bad guys, and a whole passel of ordinary guys.