Immigrant, inventor, botanist, writer and pioneering conservationist, Muir is one of the great Scots of the nineteenth century. From his humble origins in Dunbar, John Muir has risen to the status of an American icon as the father of American conservation. While others dreamed of becoming the archetypal New World Man, escaping into the wilderness beyond the confines and comfits of civilisation, very few actually lived the dream as Muir did, fully and deeply. Frederick Turner's monumental work is the definitive biography on Muir.