KU News Release

Donald E. Worster

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More Information

• Department of History

LAWRENCE — Donald Worster, the Joyce and Elizabeth Hall Distinguished Professor of U.S. History at the University of Kansas, received the Scottish Book of the Year Award for his biography “A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir” from the Scottish Arts Council. The award is funded by the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust.

Worster will receive 30,000 British pounds in recognition of his literary talent and the significance of his biography, which positions Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, as a national icon for Scotland and a figure of global significance for concern about the environment.

“John Muir, a native of Scotland and an immigrant to the United States, was one of the founders of modern environmentalism,” said Worster. “This generous book award will, I hope, help introduce his life and achievements to modern Scots and inspire everywhere a deeper concern for saving the planet's ecology.”

Worster was praised for his “subtle understanding of Scottish sensibilities” by the panel of judges.

“ ‘A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir’ is beautifully written, deeply accessible and should be in every Scottish home and classroom, next to the poetry of Robert Burns,” said award judge Gavin Wallace, head of literature for the Scottish Arts Council. “John Muir is one of history’s greatest evangelists for the natural world. The revelations triggered by the book’s huge insight and relevance for today’s global society inspired intense debate amongst the judges, and its sheer ‘worldliness’ solidly secured its selection as Book of the Year.”

Published by Oxford University Press in 2008, “A Passion for Nature” has won the Ambassador Book Award from the English-Speaking Union of the United States, Scotland’s Saltire Society homecoming literary award and KU’s Byron Caldwell Smith Book Award. It was named one of the top 10 biographies for 2009 by Booklist and one of the Washington Post Book World’s best books of 2008.

Worster has been described as “one of the most eminent environmental historians of the West.” His book “A River Running West: The Life of John Wesley Powell” (2001) received a Byron Caldwell Smith Book Award at KU and the 2002 Caughey Western History Association Prize. “Rivers of Empire” (1985) was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and “The Dust Bowl: An Agricultural and Social History” (1979) won the national Bancroft Prize.

Worster joined KU’s history department in 1989. He earned a bachelor’s in 1963 and master’s in 1964, both from KU. He received a doctorate in American history and literature from Yale University in 1971.