Dan Chapman retraces the ecologist John Muir’s thousand-mile walk through the Reconstruction-era South, and what he finds there today is alarming.

Alternating between jeremiad and dark satire, Mr. Chapman, a seasoned environmental journalist from Georgia, thinks that we have lived precisely the way Muir admonished us we shouldn’t—namely, as if the world were made for humans. While Mr. Chapman isn’t loath to name his villains, he is more interested in the good guys.

How would Muir react to our contemporary landscape? 'He would cry in his beer today,' writes Chapman. However, Muir likely would nod his approval at the work of his acolyte.

[Chapman's] wry observations and self-deprecating wit make a book that delivers great doses of history and bad news surprisingly readable.

Chapman offers a lucid feature-story narrative with a splash of gonzo.