The Quiet World: Saving Alaska's Wilderness Kingdom, 1879-1960

"Douglas Brinkley has written a sweeping, blow-by-blow account of the struggle to preserve the last great remnants of American wilderness. An engaging appraisal of the crucial skirmishes in the battle over wild Alaska, The Quiet World is populated not only by the requisite luminaries like John Muir and Ansel Adams, but also by a cast of quirky, unexpected characters. The Quiet World is a fascinating and important read." -- Jon Krakauer

In this follow-up to his New York Times bestseller Wilderness Warrior, acclaimed historian Douglas Brinkley offers a riveting, expansive look at the past and present battle to preserve Alaska's wilderness.

Brinkley explores the colorful diversity of Alaska's wildlife, arrays the forces that have wreaked havoc on its primeval arctic refuge--from Klondike Gold Rush prospectors to environmental disasters like the Exxon-Valdez oil spill--and documents environmental heroes from Theodore Roosevelt to Dwight Eisenhower and beyond. Not merely a record of Alaska's past, The Quiet World is a compelling call-to-arms for sustainability, conservationism, and conscientious environmental stewardship--a warning that the land once called Seward's Folly may go down in history as America's Greatest Mistake.

Douglas Brinkley is the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities and Professor of History at Rice University, a CNN Presidential Historian, and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. In the world of public history, he serves on boards, at museums, at colleges, and for historical societies. The Chicago Tribune dubbed him "America's New Past Master." The New-York Historical Society has chosen Brinkley as its official U.S. Presidential Historian. His recent book Cronkite won the Sperber Prize, while The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast received the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. He was awarded a Grammy for Presidential Suite and is the recipient of seven honorary doctorates in American studies. His two-volume, annotated Nixon Tapes recently won the Arthur S. Link-Warren F. Kuehl Prize. He is a member of the Century Association, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the James Madison Council of the Library of Congress. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and three children.

www.douglasbrinkley.com