The National Parks: America's Best Idea »

Dayton Duncan, writer and producer of The National Parks, is an award-winning author and documentary filmmaker. His nine other books include, with Ken Burns, Horatio’s Drive and Lewis & Clark. He has collaborated on all of Ken Burns’s films for twenty years as a writer, producer, and consultant. He lives in Walpole, New Hampshire.

The companion volume to the twelve-hour PBS series from the acclaimed filmmaker behind The Civil War, Baseball, and The War

America s national parks spring from an idea as radical as the Declaration of Independence: that the nation s most magnificent and sacred places should be preserved, not for royalty or the rich, but for everyone. In this evocative and lavishly illustrated narrative, Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan delve into the history of the park idea, from the first sighting by white men in 1851 of the valley that would become Yosemite and the creation of the world s first national park at Yellowstone in 1872, through the most recent additions to a system that now encompasses nearly four hundred sites and 84 million acres.

The authors recount the adventures, mythmaking, and intense political battles behind the evolution of the park system, and the enduring ideals that fostered its growth. They capture the...

Publishers Weekly

Starred Review.

Duncan and Burns, who last teamed on Horatio's Drive: America's First Road Trip, rejoin in this visually stunning guide to the unforgettable landscapes and fascinating history of America's national parks. A companion to the documentary miniseries, this book provides not only an armchair tour of the parks but lessons in American history and biography, as Duncan and Burns attempt to answer the question, "Who are we?" through the foundation and legacy of American conservation. From Yellowstone, the first national park, to Acadia to the Everglades, readers will learn the origins of many of the parks, monuments, and historic areas across the U.S., illustrated with more than a century's worth of photographs. A recurring theme throughout history has been the value and purpose of conservation and beauty, versus utility and tourism, and the story of the parks brings it into brilliant focus; readers will meet characters like John Muir, Horace Albright, Stephen Mather, Adolph Murie, and others who helped create the existing park system (with no shortage of attention paid to Theodore Roosevelt). Likely to inspire adventure-seekers of all generations, this broad, deep, evocative survey is just the kind of volume readers have come to expect from filmmaker and cultural historian Burns.
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Preface
OUR BEST SELVES
A Treasure House of Nature's Superlatives
 
Chapter One
THE SCRIPTURE OF NATURE
Homeland: An Interview with Gerard Baker
 
Chapter Two
FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE PEOPLE
Transcendence: An Interview with Shelton Johnson
 
Chapter Three
EMPIRE OF GRANDEUR
Stories of Discovery: An Interview with Nevada Barr
 
Chapter Four
GOING HOME
Redefining Beauty: An Interview with Paul Schullery
 
Chapter Five
GREAT NATURE
Democracy at Its Best: An Interview with Juanita Greene
 
Chapter Six
THE MORNING OF CREATION
This Is What We Loved: An Interview with Terry Tempest Williams
 
Afterword
THE BEST DAY
 
Acknowledgments
Selected Bibliography
Index
Illustration Credits
Film Credits