One of the best-known and most widely read nature writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, John Burroughs is largely unknown and unread today. Prolific and consistent, Burroughs published scores of essays in influential large-circulation magazines between the Civil War and World War I. Such journals as Appleton's, The Atlantic Monthly, Century, Galaxy, and Scribner's Monthly made his reputation as important as that of Henry David Thoreau, to whom he was often compared. Unlike Thoreau, however, whose reputation grew posthumously, Burroughs earned a reputation by publishing nearly thirty books during his long career. As a celebrity author, he lived to see his essays taught widely in secondary schools in the early twentieth century. A telling instance of Burroughs's celebrity occurred in the spring of 1903, when he accompanied President Theodore Roosevelt to Yellowstone National Park. During the overland trek, the presidential train stopped in many towns and...