SOURCE: Brooks, Paul. “‘The Two Johns’: Burroughs and Muir.” In Speaking for Nature: How Literary Naturalists from Henry Thoreau to Rachel Carson Have Shaped America, pp. 3‐32. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1980.
In the following excerpt, Brooks explores the lives and writings of the naturalists John Muir and John Burroughs, claiming that the two men made Americans recognize the natural world as part of their culture by revealing poetic truth behind scientific facts.
