A Thinking Person’s Guide To America’s National Parks

A Thinking Person’s Guide to America National Parks edited by Robert Manning, Rolf Diamant, Nora Mitchell, and David Harmon, is an exhaustive look at the National Park Service. One hundred years ago Stephen Mather became the first Director of the newly established national agency which took oversight over the parks that existed before, some of them being Yosemite and Yellowstone. The first National Parks were nature preserves in the west, but they went on to also collect national monuments that helped tell Americas stories. The book explores themes in the development of the national parks as well as new developments. One finds here effort to diversify the parks and their visitors, concerns about global warming, debates about public history, efforts to combat light pollution, and other things.

This coffee table sized book with 23 chapters and hundreds of photographs seeks to examine the 400 or so US National Park Service sites from mostly involved scholarly perspectives. It is a great trip through a troubled America. It is also third person and maybe for some elitist, but the book does knowledgeably address the wonderful vastness that we all should be able to share here in America.