Longreads

The Atlantic and Longreads are announcing a new partnership that aims to showcase the best in long-form journalism and fiction. The partnership is, ahem, long-term and involves highlighting the…

When we think of the birth of the conservation movement in the 19th century, the names that usually spring to mind are the likes of John Muir and Henry David Thoreau, men who wrote about the need to protect wilderness areas in an age when the notion of mankind's "manifest destiny" was all the rage. But a far less remembered American—a contemporary of Muir and Thoreau—can claim to be the person who first publicised the now largely unchallenged idea that humans can negatively influence the environment that supports them.