Join us on Tuesday, September 29th as we welcome Daniel Duane to the shop for the release of Yosemite Falls! Save the date! RSVP is not required, but appreciated. Seats are first come, first served and can be guaranteed with the purchase of a book or a $3 sliding scale donation to our program.

About the book

From a cult-favorite nature writer, a memoir of climbing, California, and the double-sided coin of legacy and preservation.

In Daniel Duane’s childhood, John Muir was apostle and prophet, the man who taught Californians to love nature. Duane's family worshipped in the Muir way by backpacking, skiing, and climbing. They read the scripture, too, from Muir's earnest essays to the memoirs of the charismatic geologist Clarence King to classic accounts of Indigenous California. Paradise, for Duane's family, was Yosemite National Park. For Duane, though, devotional study of Yosemite meant confrontation with its nuanced, violent—and sometimes absurd—history.

In Yosemite Falls, Duane tells the story of his family and the park, populated by the characters of his own life and of California past. His beloved outdoorsman father, who taught him to climb and cast a long shadow. His mother, his wife, and his daughters, who all share his passion for the outdoors. Ishi, who in 1911 was the last living member of the Yahi people, taken in as an object of study by UC Berkeley. And Muir himself, whose messy biography and Victorian worldview forced Duane into a painful apostasy about California’s "great” men and their gospel of the wild. Yosemite Falls is a vital and exuberant correction to the canon, offering an idiosyncratic new history of wilderness in the Golden State, where white supremacy, cultural theft, and governmental overreach abound.

With wry humor and inimitable style, Duane has crafted a book that is both playful and moving, at once a memoir of life in the mountain west and a reckoning with the true legacies of his family’s ecological heroes.

About the author

Daniel Duane is the author of six books, including the novel Looking for Mo, the climbing memoir Lighting Out: A Vision of California and the Mountains, and the cult-classic surfing memoir Caught Inside: A Surfer’s Year on the California Coast. He has been a contributor to The New York Times for three decades, and his writing has also appeared in Outside, The Guardian, GQ, Alta, Men’s Journal, and The Best American Science and Nature Writing. He lives and practices psychotherapy in San Francisco.

About the bookstore

The Booksmith is an independent bookstore located in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco since 1976.

Please note:

• Check-in for the event will begin at 6:45pm.
• Priced ticket holders (Book+seat, Pay it Forward!+seat) will have seats held until 7pm. Arrivals after 7pm will be allowed admission, but seats are not guaranteed.
• General admission ticket holders will be offered seats at check-in on a first-come, first-served basis. May be standing room.
• Space at the door on the day of the event is usually available, but not guaranteed.
• Books will be for sale on the night of the event.
• ADA accessible. Bathrooms on site during event hours.
• Events typically end between 8:30 and 9pm.
• Questions? tickets@booksmith.com