A Treasury of the Sierra Nevada is a collection of writings edited by Robert Leonard Reid in 1982. Reid is a math professor, writer and Sierra Club Member. The book is made up of seven sections including; The Explorers, The Vacationers, The Mountaineers, The Conservationists and several others. Among the authors excerpted in A Treasury of the Sierra Nevada are John Muir, Mark Twain, Bret Harte, John Charles Fremont, Robert Louis Stevenson and John McPhee. The selections were well chosen. Even though I had read many of the whole books some of these chapters were taken from I would say that reading A Treasury of the Sierra Nevada was well worth the time and effort.

Reid's introduction to the chapter that was an editorial in the 1890 Atlantic, The Carcase of a Horse, could be addressing the recent takeover of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge. Writing in 1982 Reid said "private interests attempted to wrest public-interest lands away from the Federal Government during the Land Grab of the 1940s and the Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1980s. Supporters of the takeovers put forth the specious argument that local people should control local lands, ignoring the fact that this is not an argument at all but a mandate for exploitation. However plodding and impersonal federal management of national interest lands may be, Washington has the interests of the nation at heart, while local managers have only their own. " ( )