Engineering Eden by Jordan Fisher Smith

Jordan Fisher Smith . Unknown Year . English

The award-winning story of the century-and-half-long attempt to control nature in the American wilderness, told through the prism of a tragic death at Yellowstone&;now in paperback In the summer of 1972, 25-year-old Harry Eugene Walker hitchhiked away from his family&;s northern Alabama dairy farm to see America. Nineteen days later he was killed by an endangered grizzly bear in Yellowstone National Park. The ensuing civil trial, brought against the US Department of the Interior for alleged mismanagement of the park&;s grizzly population, emerged as a referendum on how America&;s most beloved wild places should be conserved. Two of the twentieth century&;s greatest wildlife biologists testified&;on opposite sides. Moving across decades and among Yellowstone, Yosemite, Glacier, and Sequoia National Parks, author and former park ranger Jordan Fisher Smith has crafted an epic, emotionally wrenching account of America&;s fraught, century-and-a-half-long attempt to remake Eden&;in the name of saving it.

Categories: Wildlife & Nature

About the Author

Jordan Fisher Smith spent 21 years as a park ranger and firefighter in California, Idaho, Wyoming, and Alaska. His 2016 nonfiction book ENGINEERING EDEN won a 2017 California Book Award and was longlisted for the 2017 PEN/E.O. Wilson Award for Literary Science Writing. In 2019, when ENGINEERING EDEN was published in paperback, OUTSIDE Magazine listed it as one of "10 Outdoor Books that Shaped the Last Decade." Smith's previous book, NATURE NOIR, was a Booksense Bestseller, an Audubon Magazine Editor's Choice, and a San Francisco Chronicle Best Books of 2005 pick. Jordan has written for THE NEW YORKER, TIME.com, THE DAILY BEAST, DISCOVER, and MEN'S JOURNAL, and is a principal cast member and narrator of a film about Lyme disease, "Under Our Skin," which made the 2010 Oscar Shortlist for Best Documentary Feature. Jordan Fisher Smith now writes, speaks, and teaches nonfiction writing from his home in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. To write to Jordan go to jordanfishersmith.com.

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