Winner of the John Burroughs Medal for Nature Writing, the Commonwealth Club Silver Medal for Literature 1984, and named one of the twentieth century's best nonfiction books by the San Francisco Chronicle, The Klamath Knot, originally published by Sierra Club Books in 1983, is a personal vision of wilderness in the Klamath Mountains of northwest California and southwest Oregon, seen through the lens of "evolutionary mythology." David Rains Wallace uses his explorations of the diverse ecosystems in this region to ponder the role of evolution and myth in our culture. The author's new epilogue makes a case for the creation of a new park to safeguard this exceptionally rich storehouse of relict species and evolutionary stories, which has largely been bypassed by conservationists since John Muir.

David Rains Wallace is the author of over a dozen books, including The Bonehunter's Revenge: Dinosaurs, Greed, and the Greatest Scientific Feud of the Gilded Age (1999), The Monkey's Bridge: Mysteries of Evolution in Central America (1997), and The Quetzal and the Macaw: The Story of Costa Rica's National Parks (1992).

"This is a rare and imaginative introduction to a wilderness that links past and present; Wallace belongs to the first rank of science writers, with Stephen Jay Gould, Roger Swain, and Lewis Thomas."—Publishers Weekly

"Not since Lewis Thomas wrote The Lives of a Cell has there been a union of science, beauty, imagination and fine writing like the one David Wallace has provided in The Klamath Knot. He has combined science and myth without doing violence to either, [offering] a rich synthesis which unites evolutionary theory and mythic insight."—Joseph Meeker, San Francisco Chronicle

"Wallace is among the very best of our nature writers, one whose work is marked by grace, feeling and a deep desire to know the natural world in all its moods."—Harry Middleton, Philadelphia Inquirer

"The Klamath Knot is a classic work of natural history, a wondrous meditation through time and space, and an intimate portrait of a miraculous stretch of land, forest, and mountain as botanically rich as any place in North America, as ecologically vital and important as any place on the planet."—Wade Davis, author of One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rain Forest

"In Wallace's hands, evolution is never mechanical or abstract; it is always seen operating in particular sites and species. As a stylist and a thinker Wallace is in a select class of writers who make science into literature."—Ernest Callenbach, author of Ecotopia

"For those of us who like David Rains Wallace's writing, it is good news indeed that his much-admired The Klamath Knot is back in print."—Sue Hubbell, author of Waiting for Aphrodite: Journeys into the Time Before Bones

"A classic of natural history which will take its place alongside Walden and A Sand County Almanac."—G. Ledyard Stebbins, author of Variation and Evolution in Plants

"The Klamath Knot is a marvelous book, one of the finest nature essays I have read, beautifully written, full of stimulating ideas and insights."—George B. Schaller, author of The Last Panda

Included in the San Francisco Chronicle's poll of the twentieth century's 100 best non-fiction books west of the Rockies.