Describes the life of the landscape architect responsible for New York's Central Park and Boston's Emerald Necklace including his lesser-known time spent as an influential journalist, early voice for the environment and abolitionist, all overshadowed by a tragic personal life.

"A Merloyd Lawrence book."

Why Olmsted matters -- "An Enthusiast by Nature" : Growing Up, 1822-1851. So very young ; At sea ; Uncommon friends ; A farmer and finite ; Two pilgrimages -- "The Cause of Future Freedom" : Southern Travels and Journalism, 1852-1857. "The South" ; Tief im herzen von Texas ; A red-hot abolitionist ; The literary republic -- "A People's Pleasure-Ground" : Conceiving Central Park, 1857-1861. "Is New York really not rich enough?" ; Right man, right place ; A park is born ; Growling green ; Swans -- "Heroes Along With the Rest": Civil War Service, 1861-1863. In search of a mission ; In the republic of suffering ; Antietam to Gettysburg ; "The country cannot spare you" -- "There Seems to be No Limit" : California, 1863-1865. Gold dust ; Yosemite ; Unsettled in the West -- "Where Talents and the Needs of the World Cross" : Shaping the Nation, 1865-1877. New prospects ; City planning: Buffalo and Chicago ; Battling Boss Tweed, splitting with Vaux ; Blindness and vision -- "I Have All My Life Been Considering Distant Effects" : Summits and Sorrows, 1877-1903. A troubled wander year ; Stringing emeralds ; Saving Niagara, designing Stanford ; Big house in the big woods ; A white city dreamscape ; "Before I am the least prepared for it" ; Fade -- Olmsted's wild garden -- The Olmsted views.