Park University Books

If you have an open and inquisitive mind, no matter what your political outlook, you will enjoy this exploration of western America and our relationship with this unique landscape. Solnit weaves discussions about the settlement of the west by Euro-Americans, native American rights, nuclear testing, and other critical issues, with ruminations about H.D. Thoreau, John Muir, country music, landscape painters, and other intriguing topics. This is an excellent book about an important subject that will delight you if you let it.

Solnit's juxtaposition of the insidious nuclear poisoning of Nevada to the making of Yosemite National Park (that she shows has been "loved to death" since it was first discovered by whites more than 150 years ago)makes this book a must for all environmentalists. Solnit deals directly with themes of conquest and redemption in historic efforts to both tame and use these lands. Readers gain specific understanding about two places that are, after all, national icons. However, the deeper themes so well-developed in this book are being played out no less dramtically all across the country.

If people would really read the TRUE history of Yosemite Indians they would find something interesting. First the Miwoks in the area were friends and workers for James Savage and Charles Webber, the founder of Stockton. The Miwoks had a working relationship with both white men and they dug gold for them. The real Indians of Yosemite were Mono Paiutes who tried to fight off the invasion, and not Miwoks. They were allied with the white invaders and they called James Savage "White father". I am a descendent of the original Indians of Yosemite and there is a problem. The defintion "Some of them are killers" for Yosemite was fabricated in 1978 and is not the original meaning of Yosemite. The real meaning was "The Killers" or "The Grizzlies" because the Miwoks were afraid of the Ahwahnees. It was Chief Bautista and Russio, who were helping the Mariposa Battalion, who coined that term "Yosemite" for the Indians in Yosemite Valley which they were afraid to enter. It is because the Miwoks were once enemies of Chief Tenaya and the Ahwahnees. 30 years Yosemite National Park Service hired a person named Craig Bates who was married to a Miwok woman and had a 1/2 Miwok son who created that new defintion. So it is increble that ONE person changed the meaning and defintion of one of the most important and well known parks in the whold world...and no one noticed. The Miwoks were actually the scouts and guides for James Savage and the Mariposa Battalion, but you would not know it because the information was controlled by the "Indian expert" at Yosemite, which causes wrong information to be written...like the actual defintion of Yosemite. For the real story read Lafayette H. Bunnell's Discovery of the Yosemite to find out the truth.

This book is classic eco paganistic 1/2 truths and full tripe. Solnit carries on a dreamy and irresponsible massive 'feel good' opinion piece about the handfull of people harmed by our successfull development of our deffensive nuclear weapons. The author fails to note that our development and limited use of our weapons saved millions of lives.
If you are currently a eco pagan, here is more for your religion. If you want a full account of the history of our deffensive development of nuecs, don't waste your time reading this novel. However, if you want further insight into the basis that drives our planet's new pagan eco religion, then this book will help you to understanding their factualy fictionist journey into politics.

Wow, take a moment to read the other reviews of this book.

I picked this book up off a bargain table, and months later happened to take it with me when I was visiting Yosemite without knowing 1/2 the book was about Yosemite. That was kind of a thrill.

Solnit's historical and writing skills, her ability to build a world stage of activity and its interconnectedness with her narrative are extraordinary.

As a landscape artist and photographer, I find this book to be a great resource. Understanding the history of Yosemite is frankly consciousness shifting.

As the other reviewer says, nuclear weapons are our oyster.

Indians, big bangs, Central Park, Fremont and the Heart of Darkness. How about that.

This book was an interesting series of "challenges and stories" of what it's like in the "Johnny Molloy world" of experiences in the Smokie. It IS NOT a guide book, but rather a sharing of thoughts and ideas about the events on camping excursions as they relate to personal experience. Johnny "paints a picture" which is hard to not see, and brings you into the wilderness with him. I repeatedly found myself wanting to pick up the book and "share" in another experience with the writer. This is probably mostly about my wanting to be there, but not making that physical choice. Reading the book took me back to where I enjoy being. The physical struggling, sometimes touched on, was particularly interesting, as when we are up against our limits (a frequent theme in the stories), is when we learn the most about ourselves. It was an interesting "read"! Highly recommended.

This book shares the essence of the outdoor experience of the Great Smoky Mountains. I only wish it was longer and had more pictures. You can easily follow the authors' footsteps.. directions included.

Johnny Molloy's Trial by Trail tells you what it's really like in the backcountry of the Smokies. If you're green, read Trial by Trail and find out what and what not to do. If you're experienced, read these exciting, fast-reading real life stories and remember when you were just as cold, lost, exhilarated or serene. This ain't no preachy guidebook, its a grainy portrait of life on the trail. After reading the first story, you'll be itching to pack up and hit the trail. Johnny Molloy knows what he's talking about, so read, learn, then go for it!

Anyone who buys this book expecting a guide to the Great Smoky Mountains will be dissapointed. However, if you want to read a great collection of stories, stories that make you feel as if your on the trail, this is the book for you. Johnny Molloy probably knows as much about the how-to part of camping as anyone, spending over a hundred nights a year in the backcountry. But again, this book isn't a how to guide. This book is about his experiences in the Smokies. And it's more than just a diary. It makes you feel as if your are on the trail with him. Anyone who loves to camp, for more than just purposes of taking a vacation, will enjoy this book.

I ordered this book under the misconception that it was a guide to trails in the park. The title, I feel, is misleading. This book is actually a collection of essays about the author's experiences hiking the park.

Rather than offering us a history of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Brown conceives this book as a "biography" of the Smokies. As a result, she tries to focus the story on the personal level, in terms of how people have experienced this land. Naturally, the residents of this land get top billing but visitors increasingly crowd the stage.

Brown makes extensive use of oral histories, which changes the focus of this history. She sees the traditional forest economy from the standpoint of mountaineers and Cherokees, and tells us how the entry of lumber companies into the area changed that economy. Then she moves to more familiar stories around creation of the park, the damming of the Little Tennessee River by the TVA, and the growth of automobile tourism. As other reviewers have noted, she spends surprisingly little time on the role of Kephart in creation of the park, a lacuna that I cannot explain.

Brown writes academic prose, but in a lively style. Though not a local, she now lives and teaches nearby and she has clearly developed a passion for this land. If you're a visitor to the Smokies and want to know more about the people of this land, this may be the best book for you.

Margaret Lynn Brown has written a fine first book about the Smokies, a park in which I have hiked almost annually for the better part of thirty years. The history of the area is familiar to me, but I was still fascinated by the details of such topics as "The Road to Nowhere," the wild boar controversy, the introduction of horseback riding, and other choices about wildness ratified by the National Park Service. The author writes well enough, and the illustrations have been well chosen.

Like many revised dissertations, this book includes too many quotations, especially pedestrian ones from park service personnel whom the author has interviewed. Brown is also a "tongue clucker" who treats people of the past as if they should have known better than say, to feed bears or clear-cut old growth forest. Nor do I believe that the greatest threat to the environment is "unregulated industrial capitalism," a notion that some concentrated thoughts about the environmental disaster of sub-Saharan Africa might disabuse. At least Brown and I agree on the crassness of contemporary tourism in Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge.

Margaret Lynn Brown's "The Wild East" is an important contribution to the field of environmental history. The author seems to know the region where the Great Smoky Mountains is in, well. She traces the history of the Smokies and of the people living there. She analyzes how the Smokies came to be under the federal government's jurisdiction and how the landscape was changed profoundly.

What I find most interesting is the attempt by a superintendent's effort to preserve the mountains as pristine as possible but he came up with some strong objections by surrounding residents who were concern about bringing money in to the region. Also, surrounding towns began to flourish as attractions like Ripley Believe it or Not and even Dollywood became the focus of tourists going to the Smokies to get away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. It's almost ironic that there is such drastic difference between the Smokies, where wilderness is preserve and the very commericialized towns surrounding the mountains.

This book is a wonderful review of the history and management of Great Smokies National Park.

The author brings to life the dirty details of the heroic political triumphs and failures associated with the park. As well as, the ecological changes that swept the Appalachian mountians and the new challenges still faced. In addition, she drives home the social cost inherent in the changes that have occured in the Smoky Mt. region.

Her book sheds light on the key poltical, ecological and social issues facing the park today.

If you are looking for a book that paints a "quaint" picture of Appalachia, don't look here. If on the other hand you want a book that will make you think about the complex interactions of ecology, human relationships and politcal struggles, read on!

M.L. Brown's The Wild East: A Biography of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park is the amazing story of the centerpiece of eastern wilderness. Introducing herself and her work with a refreshing and highly personal account, Brown immediately enlightens the reader as to her motivations. What proceeds is a history that is so meticulously researched that the wildness of the park seems almost suburban, making The Wild East simultaneously fascinating and slightly disappointing. But pathos is bound to ensue after the mythical GSMNP is taken off of its pedestal, and Brown delivers a heavy dose of reality by focusing on prior land use within the park, the contradictions of park management, and the nebulous concept of 'wilderness'. The result is an accurate account of the park's creation that de-shrouds it of some of its wild mystery, an effect that might not be enjoyed by every reader.

In Brown's defense, she had few complete histories of the park to update and examine (outside of D.S. Pierce's The Great Smokies), and the litany of personal accounts, newspaper articles, and other histories that she unearths make for a tremendous piece of scholarship. Brown leaves no stone unturned in describing the opportunism of the Tennesseans and consternation of the North Carolineans, and she fully reviews both sides of every major argument that enveloped the park to the present. Of particular interest is her focus on making the history of park and area residents seem less like 'hillbillies' and more like average Americans of a century ago, with many personal accounts of day-to-day Appalachian life.

But missing in her attempt to please everybody is a sense of the rancor and vitriol that must have surrounded the park's formation, guided by a healthy dose of eccentricity from all of the wonderful folk who gave a hand in helping of hindering the park's will to survive. Her most flagrant omission is an unbiased discussion Horace Kephart and his contributions to both regional anthropology and the park's development; Kephart is only mentioned in passing. For a park with such a dynamic history, one might wish for a more dynamic story, with a greater sense of the conflict and character that makes the Great Smoky Mountains the centerpiece of eastern wilderness.

Again, a good portion of the park was settled, and thus its status as 'wilderness' is a matter of debate. To this end Brown inexplicably addresses eminent environmental historian William Cronon on the topic of wilderness in her conclusion, which is a departure from her storyline and should have been omitted. Had she debated wilderness directly throughout the book her conclusion would not be so disjoint.

An argument that Brown does develop is the issue of land management both within and around the park, with a focus on the Gatlinburg area and conflict surrounding park managers and policies. Her bear management discussion is particularly strong, as is the history of contrasting land development on the North Carolina and Tennessee sides of the park and park management of Cades' Cove.

In short, despite its shortcomings, The Wild East is a necessary read for all GSMNP enthusiasts. Brown's honest history might make the park lose some of its luster, but will also surely create new leagues fans for the dynamic GSMNP.

How can I trust the advice of someone who doesn't even know the correct name for his subject. Forget it.

Cactuses is now generally accepted as correct. Cacti is the older version of the plural form for cactus. Definitely a modern book.

Clean clear presentation, photos well done.

This book is just what the non-botanist needs to identify and enjoy the "cactuses" of Big Bend NP. It is concise, accurate, and beautifully illustrated with photos taken within the park in natural habitats,...not in artificial greenhouse settings as with other cactus books. And, yes, in today's American English, cactuses is entirely proper.

The Gates was too cool. As with all art, it is subjective. One person might consider junk, is anothers treasure. The Gates was a sight to see. We went on a trip to NY to see them. TOO COOL! The book is great.

What these men do is not art, it is junk. Real art is Picasso, Renoir, Rodin, Ansel Adams etc... Since this is not art,logically any book about "the gates" is a waste of money. Anybody who thinks that what this book shows is art should look up the word pretentious.

The Central Park Gates Project will be remembered as the first great public art installation of the 21st century. Christo's gift to New York City was immersive, democratic and profoundly spiritual. If you want to understand the thought, passion and effort that went into this masterpiece, then this is the book for you.

This book depicts a project began by the authors circa 1979.
The presentation contains many full-color pictures i.e.
The Wrapped Coast of Sydney, Australia. The Wrapped Coast is
a spectacular presentation of a rock formation set in contrast
to the sea and sky. The work has a presentation by Da Vinci
in Milan and a panorama of umbrellas called the "Japan Gates".
The volume is well worth the price for art and world culture
enthusiasts.

Does a fair job on the basics, but too much east-coast liberal attitude. The bad cattle, bad dams, people building houses.
Another case of lock up the west and keep it a playground for the coasts.

Robert Fillmore is most gifted in his abilites to cogently describe the unique geology that yields this region's unsurmounted depth and beauty.

No one, geologist or casual traveller, should enter Utah without this compelling guide.

Being a Geology major learning under Professor Fillmore, his book helped me many times in my research. Not only does he do a great job describing the geology of southern Utah, but his enthusiasm for the area shines through in his writing. Fillmore also has a knack describing very technical processes in ways which anyone can understand.

The first chapter in his book consists of basic principles of geology. This covers most of the forces behind the deposition of the various formations in Utah. These include the geologic rock cycle, basic igneous and sedimentary classifications, rock deformation, monoclines/anticlines/synclines, and the geologic time scale.

The second part consists of a chronological description of the geology of southern Utah, starting from the Pennsylvanian (about 12,500 million years ago) and running all the way to the Quaternary (present). This is the part which comes in really useful for research, because not only does Fillmore write in very easy to understand language, but he also cites all of his sources, mostly from scientific papers, in an easy to look up GSA format.

The third part comes in handy for the tourist and fossil hounds out there! Once you are familiar with the geology of Southern Utah, Fillmore takes you through a mile-by-mile tour, pointing out various rock outcrops and explaining what caused them to form. This is a wealth of knowledge which can make any drive through southern utah an educational experience for the whole family.

This book is a must have for anyone wanting to know about the geology of southern Utah. The material within is very well researched by a college professor of geology, who has a love for the area he is writing about.

---
Christoph

fillmore spends the first 2/3's of the book discussing, via geologic time periods, the formations laid down in so. utah, and the conditions which created the formations - it is wonderfully written for the layperson to the non-professional but very interested geologist - the final third is dedicated to describing roadside geology starting from east of capital reef and traveling to just west of zion - overall an excellent book and definitely worth the read for anyone interested in understanding more about the beautiful areas that are so. utah

I found that the book was directed more toward complete novices. The book was overly detailed for a person with even limited experience. The book also addressed specific types and brand names of equipment that the author used, while only brielfy touching on other options available. A novice wishing to follow the equipment recommendations to the letter should be aware that his choices were also very expensive, particularly for people who may only make one trip a summer. I much preferred Cliff Jacobson's "Boundary Waters, Canoe Camping with Style". Jacobson offers route recommendations, excellent illustrations, recipes and a miriad of equipment choices. He also provides a list of manufacturers in the appendix.

Furtman has vast experience in the canoe country of northern Minnesota and southern Canada. Through his writing he empowers the reader to make wise choices with regards to trip planing, packing, camping, canoeing and cooking. The book is well worth reading for anyone contemplating a trip to Canoe Country in the future. It even makes great reading for those of us who have experienced this great adventure. I found myself saying, "why didn't I think of that", time and time again.

Having read lots of other books on this subject, I have to say that this title is the only one that meshes with my experience. His recommendations are absolutely on the money due to a paring away of hype surrounding the gear you should use when canoe camping. A great book for the novice canoe-camper and one with opinions which happen to be borne out by the experience of others.

This book is very good, but I am more interested in the scientific than in the artistic aspects of the conception of light. It is a personal preference, and other person could have the reverse one.
I found some mistakes. For example, the author says that a blue light combined with a yellow one give a green light and that is not true. But the book is still good. I prefer "Catching the light" a lot, but I do not regret have read this interesting book.

The subtitle of Prof. Park's book is "A historical Essay on the Nature and Meaning of Light." That promise is faithfully kept in a thorough, erudite, and entertaining narrative. Park, a physicist, seems equally at home as historian, philosopher and classicist. Paying meticulous attention to the nuances of thought and language, he traces mankind's twenty-five century struggle to understand the phenomena of light and vision, beginning with Empedocles in Greek antiquity and ending in the quantum-mechanical era of Planck, Einstein and Bohr.

With scholarly patience, Park dissects and illuminates the struggles of early investigators to get a grip on the baffling mysteries of light and its interaction with the human eye. This often requires the author to pick bits of sense out of mounds of nonsense. He points out, for example, that even the wildly mistaken hypothesis of visual rays emanating from the eye led to some correct conclusions about geometric optics. Park also underscores the fact that taking the next step puts even the most accomplished scientists at risk. For example, Newton's particle interpretation of light incorrectly called for an increase of speed on passing from air to a denser material and (due to his influence and prestige) delayed acceptance of the wave interpretation pioneered by Huygens and conclusively demonstrated by Young. In an ironic twist, particles of light returned with a vengeance as thoroughly modern quantized photons.

Aside from some minor errors and omissions in figures, the only factual problems I encountered came on page 165, where convergence point P in Figure 6.5 is incorrectly called the focal point of the lens (this would be true only for incoming rays parallel with the optical axis), and the inverted real aerial image formed by the lens is misidentified as a virtual image.

Perhaps the most distinctive quality of "The Fire Within the Eye" is Park's astute and encyclopedic grasp of historical context. One senses that he is telling only a fraction of what he knows about the lives and times of the philosophers and scientists who populate the book.

A must read for everyone interested in Light. It explains everything - dual nature of light, polarization, diffraction, interference, colours, light as vibration of the fifth dimension, etc. Is useful both for the layman and the expert reader. The book's simplicity is its biggest advantage. From simplicity arises elegance.

This is a wonderfully engaging book on life in one of natures wonders, Yellowstone National Park. Paul Schullery offers a glimpse into both the life of our oldest National Park, and the life of a park ranger. Schullery gives us opportunity to vicariously know the park and experience the wonders of living and working in this natural cathederal. Schullery is very witty and offers accounts of the crazy encounters of those touring this grand daddy of all natural attractions.

This is an engaging and relaxing read.

As in his other books on Yellowstone, Schullery synthesizes history, science, and memoir into an engaging and engrossing read. I have spent years around the park and this book contained much that was new to me. There is a warmth and a dignity to Schullery's writing that befits our oldest national park.

Unusual for an on-the-record Park Service employee, Schullery does have his own opinions. There are friends and enemies. In the twenty years since this book was originally published, the world of Yellowstone has changed. Its greatest threat does not come from extractive and exploitative corporations, nor a complicitous government, nor even from the dingbat Congressional delegation attached to its home states. Rather, it comes from the citizenry that most professes to cherish the resource. People like you and me who are loving it to death, slicing subdivisions into critical habitat in a fevered quest for their piece of the West.

Ahhh, but Yellowstone belongs as much to the sunburned bricklayer from Ohio and his sausage-legged wife as it does to me. Schullery understands that this land was made for you and me, no matter how difficult the mediation between user groups. And as the title of the book reminds us, Yellowstone is indeed on mountain time. All the snowmobilers and timber company executives and tree-hugging commies who visit the park this year will be rotting in their graves in a hundred years but Yellowstone will endure in spite of us.

This is a wonderfully engaging book on life in one of natures wonders, Yellowstone National Park. Paul Schullery offers a glimpse into both the life of our oldest National Park, and the life of a park ranger. Schullery gives us opportunity to vicariously know the park and experience the wonders of living and working in this natural cathederal. Schullery is very witty and offers accounts of the crazy encounters of those touring this grand daddy of all natural attractions.

This is an engaging and relaxing read.

This book provides a paint-by-the-numbers history of a national park. The chapters go through the topics you'd expect, in the order you'd expect them: the region before European Americans arrived, the arrival of the first whites, promoters of the region and the people who worked to make it a national park, establishment of the park, growth of the park, and the challenges that the park faces today. The material is clearly presented and well-written for a university press book.

If you are live near Rocky Mountain National Park, or are thinking about a visit, this book might be interesting to you. But the book lacks a strong sense of why this particular story should be told. It comes across as having been written by someone who loved the park, noticed that there wasn't a standard history of the park, and so he decided to write one. It would be a valuable reference, covering all the information that one would want in such a book. Alas, it never goes beyond this, and lacks the inspiration that would make this story compelling to a wider audience.

This book provides a thorough, engaging and fascinating historical account of human activity in the area of Colorado now known as Rocky Mountain National Park. The book includes sections detailing prehistoric Native Americans activity in the area, the first European & American explorers, settlement of the area, the struggle to create the national park and early park promotion, management & use. The narrative continues into modern times, ending with a brief discussion of challenges & questions facing this popular park at the end of 20th century (the hardback edition I read was printed in 1983). The history includes plenty of colorful stories, little-known facts and some interesting early photographs. For anyone interested in Colorado history, or anyone who enjoys Rocky Mountain National Park, this book is an invaluable resource. The book may also serve as an inspiration to anyone concerned about protecting America's natural treasures today. Though nearly a century in the past, the heroic and noble efforts of individuals like Enos Mills to preserve this priceless landscape for the enjoyment of all, despite intense opposition from some of his neighbors & powerful business interests, provides a laudable example for modern times.

A thorough history, well written and spiced with anecdotes, this book shows the surpising rapidity with which the settlers in the area adapted to its greater value as a tourist mecca than as a ranching or mining prospect. It then dramatizes how the Park Service learned to negotiate the competing claims of wilderness lovers, water needs of ranchers, and vehicle visitors to provide an acceptable experience for all the varied lovers of the Rockies.