Joseph Wood Krutch (1893-1970) was born in Knoxville and did his undergraduate work at the University of Tennessee there before earning a PhD at Columbia University. Although he never again lived in Tennessee, he left money to establish Krutch Park in downtown Knoxville and was an early proponent of establishing a National Park in the Smokies. Covering the Scopes "Monkey" Trial in Dayton, Tennessee, for The Nation in 1925, he criticized UT and Knoxville leaders for not taking a stand in favor of the teaching of evolution. Krutch won the National Book Award for The Measure of Man (1954). After moving to Arizona in 1952 his reputation as a nature writer began to outweigh his reputation as a biographer and philosopher of the human condition. The subtitle pretty much sums up the scope of the essays in this book - so long as he was dealing with mankind and nature, what he had to say did fit. Every time I've checked, there have only been a few signed first editions of Krutch's books, and never any of this book.
New York: William Sloan Associates, 1964. 402 pages. Hardback in dust jacket.