Driven Wild: How the Fight Against Automobiles Launched the Modern Wilderness Movement (Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books)

For his Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Kansas (no date noted), Sutter (history , U. of Georgia) investigated how a nation founded on antipathy for the wilderness had come to cherish and protect it less than two centuries later. He found the conventional answers convincing but insufficient. Digging deeper, he noticed how early calls for wilderness preservation condemned automobiles, roads, and the US government's eagerness to modernize and mechanize roadless areas. Here, he says, is where the modern wilderness movement was ignited. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)