Berkeley, CA.

Bay Area Book Festival Author Panel: “Places Worth Fighting For: Preserving Public Lands” with Jerry Emory, Dean King, McKenzie Long

Place is political, especially when it comes to defining and defending public lands. Come hear three fascinating stories of places worth fighting for—and the people committed to preserving them. Consummate storyteller Dean King has chosen the battle over Yosemite Valley as the topic for his latest work of narrative nonfiction. In Guardians of the Valley, King recounts the friendship between John Muir and his editor Robert Underwood Johnson, two very different men who joined forces to launch the American environmental movement. Jerry Emory also tells a Yosemite tale in his “poignant” (Library Journal) biography of George Meléndez Wright, a young park ranger and biologist who, in the 1920s, revolutionized the National Park Service by introducing new science-based practices into wildlife and wilderness management. And in This Contested Land, McKenzie Long places ongoing debates over thirteen national monument sites in the context of brutal Indigenous removal, among other contentious and controversial histories. [MODERATOR] will guide you through a one-hour tour of some of the most stunning—and storied—American public lands.