Robert Wyss, author of “The Man Who Built the Sierra Club: A Life of Dave Brower,” will give two free readings on the North Olympic Peninsula.
The Port Townsend Library and the Sierra Club North Olympic Group are co-sponsoring a 7 p.m. reading Thursday upstairs in the library, 1220 Lawrence St.
Port Book and News and the Sierra Club North Olympic Group are co-sponsoring a 7 p.m. reading Friday, June 16, in the Port Angeles Library’s Carver Room, 2210 S. Peabody St.
Brower (1912-2000) was a central figure in the modern environmental movement. His leadership, vision and elegant conception of the wilderness changed forever how we approach nature.
As a young man growing up in Berkeley, Calif., Brower proved himself a fearless climber of the Sierra Nevada’s dangerous peaks. After serving in the 10th Mountain Division during World War II, he became the first executive director of the Sierra Club.
Brower’s inception of publishing picture books of nature and his media savvy attracted millions to the conservation movement and the outdoors. Through these ends, his outspokenness, and his actions with Congress and the courts, Brower stopped federally sponsored projects that would have dammed the Grand Canyon and destroyed hundreds of millions of acres of the nation’s wilderness. He made the Sierra Club into a national force.
His achievements remain some of the most important triumphs of the conservation movement. To admirers, he was tireless, passionate, visionary and unyielding. To opponents and even some supporters, he was contentious and polarizing.
Wyss is a professor of journalism at the University of Connecticut, where he has taught since 2002. He is the author of “The Man Who Built the Sierra Club, Brimfield Rush,” a nonfiction narrative set at the world-famous Brimfield Antique and Collectibles Show, and “Covering the Environment,” a journalism textbook about how journalists report on the environmental beat.
Wyss teaches environmental journalism to undergraduate students and communication skills to graduate science students. Before teaching, Wyss was a reporter and editor for 28 years for the Providence Journal, covering energy, environment and business.
He also has written for such publications as The New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, Audubon, Yankee and The Huffington Post.
“The Man Who Built the Sierra Club” will be for sale at these events. The author will be signing books.
