Joseph Knowles was a forty-five-year-old part-time painter, ex-Navy man, friend of the Sioux, and onetime hunting guide who stepped-nearly naked-into the woods to live off the land and his own devices. From 1913 to 1916, Knowles's dispatches to the world-alternating accounts of bear clubbing and quiet contemplation, written in charcoal on pieces of birch bark-set off major newspaper wars, exploiting readers' fears of modernization. Did Knowles really survive for months at a time inthe untamed wilderness without any aid, and why is the answer still so vital to the American psyche? Part adventure story, part cultural investigation,Naked in the Woods reveals a whole new dimension of our natural history.