Analyzes the critical role of roads and clashing worldviews in historical fights over wilderness in southern Utah and Northern Arizona

In his engaging book Windshield Wilderness, David Louter explores the relationship between automobiles and national parks, and how together they have shaped our ideas of wilderness. National parks, he argues, did not develop as places set aside from the modern world, but rather came to be known and appreciated through technological progress in the form of cars and roads, leaving an enduring legacy of knowing nature through machines.

In its infancy, the movement to protect wilderness areas in the United States was motivated less by perceived threats from industrial and agricultural activities than by concern over the impacts of automobile owners seeking recreational opportunities in wild areas. Countless commercial and government purveyors vigorously promoted the mystique of travel to breathtakingly scenic places, and roads and highways were built to facilitate such travel. By the early 1930s, New Deal public works programs brought these trends to a startling crescendo. The dilemma faced by stewards of the nation's public lands was how to protect the wild qualities of those places while accommodating, and often encouraging, automobile-based tourism. By 1935, the founders of the Wilderness Society had become convinced of the impossibility of doing both. In Driven Wild, Paul Sutter traces the intellectual and cultural roots of the modern wilderness movement from about 1910 through the 1930s, with tightly drawn portraits of four Wilderness Society founders--Aldo Leopold, Robert Sterling Yard, Benton MacKaye, and Bob Marshall. Each man brought a different background and perspective to the advocacy for wilderness preservation, yet each was spurred by a fear of what growing numbers of automobiles, aggressive road building, and the meteoric increase in Americans turning to nature for their leisure would do to the country’s wild places. As Sutter discovered, the founders of the Wilderness Society were "driven wild"--pushed by a rapidly changing country to construct a new preservationist ideal. Sutter demonstrates that the birth of the movement to protect wilderness areas reflected a growing belief among an important group of 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.

"Through eyewitness accounts, he relates the human stories behind this epic saga. Common soldiers struggle to find the words to describe the agony of their comrades, incredible tales of individual valor, their mortality. Also recounting their experiences are the women who nursed these soldiers and black troops who were getting their first taste of battle. The raw vitality of battle sketches by Edwin Forbes and Alfred R. Waud complement the words of the participants."--Jacket.

Pilgrim explores seven roads Jesus traveled in this series of sermons for Lent, Palm Sunday, and Easter. The roads include those to the Wilderness, Nazareth, Capernaum, Samaria, Jericho, Jerusalem, and Emmaus. Each of the seven sermons includes: - children's object lesson - pastoral prayer - discussion questions - order of service Children's object lesson themes include "Better Than A Road Map," "God's Calling Card," and "The Glue Of God's Love." Thomas A. Pilgrim is pastor of First United Methodist church, West Point, Georgia. He is a graduate of LaGrange college, Candler School of Theology at Emory University, and has served United Methodist churches in the North Georgia conference since 1966.

This book explores what many consider to be the most important issue in the re-wilding of America today-roads. Not highways, but the 500,000 miles of roads built on federal forest lands to access natural resources and then abandoned when the resources were removed. A Road Runs Through It features a collection of essays by some of today's finest nonfiction writers: Peter Matthiessen, Barry Lopez, Janisse Ray, David Quammen, David Petersen, Stephanie Mills, William Kittredge, and two dozen others. Together, they cover all aspects of roads and their impact on the wilderness. As all royalties from this book are being donated to Wildlands CPR, a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting and reviving wild places by promoting road removal and re-vegetation, this book not only educates and informs on the issues of roads-it becomes part of the solution. Book jacket.