In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World

""Photography is a strong tool, a propaganda device, and a weapon for the defense of the environment...and therefore for the fostering of a healthy human race and even very likely for its survival."" —Eliot Porter, 1962

Celebrating the 50-year anniversary of the first publication of ""In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World"" by Eliot Porter, AMMO Books is honored to present a newly restored version of one of photography's most beloved and bestselling titles.

In 1962, photographer Eliot Porter and the Sierra Club founder, David Brower, published this bestselling, and now long-out-of-print, classic monograph that has often been referred to as ""the very first coffee table book"" ever published.

Porter masterfully created and paired his color photographs of the New England woods with passages by writer Henry David Thoreau. Both Porter and Thoreau—although they lived a century apart—constantly worked to preserve Nature and protect it from manmade interference. The finished ""collaboration"" arrived in an era when environmental causes were not in the public consciousness, and yet the book became an overnight publishing success that lasted many decades with multiple print runs and and formats.

This AMMO Books edition features refined classic typography in the spirit of the original hardcover first edition, with stunning photo reproductions on recycled-content, fine paper stock. Along with a cloth cover with foil debossing, the book stays true to the original intentions and themes of that first edition, including all 73 brilliant color images lovingly restored for today's printing technology.

AMMO Books proudly releases the singular book that celebrates and rediscovers the intricacies and undeniable beauty of man's relationship to the magnificent outdoors—a sentiment that has only grown more relevant in the 50 years since ""In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World"" was first published.