It's hard to believe that for the first time ever, the mountains of Southern California have at last been given the serious artistic attention that Ansel Adams and Galen Rowell gave to Yosemite and the High Sierra. The new Sierra Club Angeles Chapter book, "Southern California Mountain Country," offers 84 color images that sweep from the Ventura and San Diego backcountry and zoom in for a central focus on the three great ranges of our region - the San Gabriel, San Bernardino and San Jacinto mountains. Each color image is paired with the powerful and poetic language of John Muir in a treasury of a memorable thoughts distilled from his books and articles. Here you will find the essence of Muir's environmental wisdom matched to the places that are ours to enjoy each day and week of the year. Muir tasted our region and gave it high praise. What if he could have walked all of it? This book imagines that possibility by pairing great Muir quotes about the Sierra Nevada with images of our Southern Sierra. The result is an amazingly close fit that invites us to recognize the relevance of Muir in our time and to affirm we live in a very special place. FEATURES THE SAN GABRIEL MOUNTAINS NATIONAL MONUMENT ESTABLISHED IN 2014 The designation in 2014 by President Obama of the San Gabriel Mountains as a National Monument reflects that nowhere else in this country does such a magnificent mountain realm form the wild and free backyard of a vast metropolis. "Southern California Mountain Country" invites you to take the next step up the mountain by encountering the wildness that is here, affirmed in the words of California's greatest environmental visionary.