"Dan Chapman’s new book is a celebration of America’s nineteenth-century Southern wilderness, and a wake-up call for the beloved, yet endangered, region today. Chapman guides us through a long-ago dazzling, buzzing, glittering world of forests, meadows, rivers, and marshes—dangerously diminished today by urban sprawl and heedless development, but not yet completely vanished from the earth." - Melissa Fay Greene, award-winning author of Praying for Sheetrock and The Temple Bombing

A Cappella Books welcomes longtime journalist and writer Dan Chapman to Manuel’s Tavern to celebrate the release of his book, A Road Running Southward: Following John Muir's Journey through an Endangered Land.

This event is free and open to the public, and copies of the book will be available for purchase.  

Eagle Eye Books is excited to host book talks and an inspirational panel. Dan Chapman, will be speaking about his new book A Road Running Southward: Following John Muir's Journey Through an Endangered Land. David Haskell will also be speaking about his new book Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution's Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction. Then we will host a creative and inspirational panel led by Sally Sears with Dan Chapman and David Haskell about conservation and activism.
 

In 1867, naturalist John Muir set out on a walking tour of the South, creating a detailed journal of his trek from Kentucky to Florida. Almost 150 years later, journalist Dan Chapman, recreated Muir’s journey to see how nature in the region has fared since Muir’s time.

Join the Smart Growth Network at 1:00 p.m. EDT on Thursday, July 28, as Chapman, author of A Road Running Southward: Following John Muir's Journey through an Endangered Land, and Paul Wolf, former City Council member from Tybee Island, Georgia, discuss how the region has experienced significant change since Muir’s time and talk about how Southerners can accommodate population growth without destroying the region’s cherished connection to nature.

Participants of the live webinar are eligible for 1.5 AICP CM credits. Live attendance required. 

Veteran Atlanta reporter Dan Chapman, distressed by sprawl-driven environmental ills in a region he loves, recreated John Muir's journey to see for himself how nature has fared since Muir's time in new book A Road Running Southward. Channeling Muir, he uses humor, keen observation, and a deep love of place to celebrate the South's natural riches. But he laments that a treasured way of life for generations of Southerners is endangered as long-simmering struggles intensify over misused and dwindling resources. Chapman seeks to discover how Southerners might balance surging population growth with protecting the natural beauty Muir found so special. Each chapter touches upon a local ecological problem--at-risk species in Mammoth Cave, coal ash in Kingston, Tennessee, climate change in the Nantahala National Forest, water wars in Georgia, aquifer depletion in Florida--that resonates across the South. Chapman delves into the region's natural history, moving between John Muir's vivid descriptions of a lush botanical paradise and the myriad environmental problems facing the South today. Along the way he talks to locals with deep ties to the land--scientists, hunters, politicians, and even a Muir impersonator--who describe the changes they've witnessed and what it will take to accommodate a fast-growing population without destroying the natural beauty and a cherished connection to nature.

A Road Running Southward is part travelogue, part environmental cri de coeur, and paints a picture of a South under siege. It is a passionate appeal, a call to action to save one of the loveliest and most biodiverse regions of the world by understanding what we have to lose if we do nothing.

Dan Chapman is a writer, reporter, and lover of the outdoors. He grew up in Washington DC and Tokyo, the son of a newspaperman and an English teacher. He worked for Congressional Quarterly, The Winston-Salem Journal, The Charlotte Observer, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He has also reported from Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. He currently writes stories about conservation in the South for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Georgann Eubanks is a writer and Emmy-winning documentarian. Her most recent books are The Month of Their Ripening: North Carolina Heritage Foods through the Year and Saving the Wild South: The Fight for Native Plants on the Brink of Extinction.

Event date: Sunday, August 21, 2022 - 5:00pm

Event address: Virtual or in-store attendance option

Join author Dan Chapman as he discusses his new book A Road Running Southward with Tommy Tomlinson at an in-person event on Wednesday, September 28, 2022, at 7 pm. Purchase the book and have it signed by the author! 

Dan Chapman is a writer, reporter, and lover of the outdoors. He grew up in Washington DC and Tokyo, the son of a newspaperman and an English teacher. He worked for Congressional Quarterly, The Winston-Salem Journal, The Charlotte Observer, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He has also reported from Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. He currently writes stories about conservation in the South for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Tommy Tomlinson is the author of the memoir The Elephant in the Room, about life as an overweight man in a growing America. He’s working on a new book about the Westminster Dog Show. Tommy is the host of the podcast “SouthBound” at WFAE, Charlotte’s NPR news station, and he also does weekly commentaries for the station. He has written for publications including Esquire, ESPN the Magazine, Sports Illustrated, Forbes, Garden & Gun, and many others. He spent 23 years as a reporter and local columnist for the Charlotte Observer, where he was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in commentary. He has taught at colleges, workshops and conferences across the country. He’s a graduate of the University of Georgia and was a 2008-09 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. Tommy and his wife, Alix Felsing, live in Charlotte.