Relates the triumphs and defeats of twelve environmentalists from Henry David Thoreau to Barry Commoner. Starting with Thoreau, Frederick Law Olmsted, and George Perkins Marsh, this book shows that conservation enjoyed the support of a few writers and scientists even in the heyday of land development in the mid-nineteenth century.
In Dreamers and Defenders Douglas H. Strong related the triumphs and defeats of twelve environmentalists from Henry David Thoreau to Barry Common. Their biographies form the dramatic and ongoing story of the conservation movement in America.