“Broome relished hiking through mist-shrouded old-growth forests, sleeping in the rain, or rock-hopping in winter on ice-covered boulders.”

Characterized by imported garbage and nuclear waste; beer cans and other litter on the side of the road; soil erosion; kudzu growing over abandoned, rusting cars and washing machines; soil contaminated by the use and abuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides; and sites of massive environmental degradation such as Tennessee’s Great Copper Basin—the South’s environmental record has been often less than sterling. Harvey Broome, however, is a native southern environmental hero, instead of a villain, and his book Out Under the Sky of the Great Smokies extols the glories of nature, rather than chronicling its degradation.