Battle for the Wilderness is one of the important works of the American conservation movement. Centered on the struggle to pass the 1964 Wilderness Act, it offers a well-written, workable definition of wilderness and presents conservation as a vital thread in American history. In a completely new preface, Michael Frome ruminates on the relative treatment of the wilderness system under successive administrations, and on recent approaches to the preservation of wild lands. The full text of the Wilderness Act - the document remains at the center of continuing disputes over the definition, designation, and disposition of wilderness - is reproduced in one appendix, while another appendix lists all the wilderness areas now designated in the fifty states.