North America Books

It was full of pretty good information and stories. I personally know the author and a few of the people in the book and in the references.

I received this book as a gift. What a great gift. The book contains many short stories that would have appeal to both the young reader as well and the older reader. The book would have a broad range of appeal. The book contains may one liners which can be used in our normal lifestyle. This book is a keeper and will become part of your library.
This book will be on my gift giving list....

Jim Great Elk Waters is wise, observant and a great story teller. History came alive for me through his tales of Indian culture and his positive approach to life is evident in every story. His book will appeal to lovers of history, to families needing the answers reflected in his quote, "Happiness, laughter and family voices in a home keep more people living right than all laws man can make," and to those people looking for inspiration, "You can be your dreamed self if only you believe." I enjoyed all of his "Views from the Medicine Lodge."

Written by Jim Great Elk Waters (the Shawnee Sub-Chief and a legislator on the Shawnee Nation URB Tribal Council), View From The Medicine Lodge is a thoughtful and thought-provoking collection of essays, stories, and poems that present Native American-based inspiration and life lessons to contemporary readers of all backgrounds. Lasting wisdom and deeply meaningful ponderings fill the pages this thoughtful account, which emphasizes the importance of finding balance between Man and Nature. View From The Medicine Lodge is an enthusiastically endorsed recommended for Native American Spirituality and Cultural Practices reference collections and reading lists.

This book is a good read, even for those of us who are neither historians or archeologists. The idea that the Vikings "discovered" America, well before Columbus, is still controversial. History has been dependent on "storytelling" for much of the timeline of America's "discovery." The author has done original research and come up with new evidence; he presents the information in a way that is interesting to the general reader. The translation is clear and direct, and the photos add even more interest to the book.

This is essential reading for anyone who ever thought that Columbus discovered America. Niels Vinding's original thesis regarding the actual landing site of Erik the Red reads like a thriller thanks to Birgitte Moyer-Vinding excellent translation. The Vikings set sail from Greenland to find a land with enough wood to supply their needs on their barren island. They discovered Vinland which is now Newfoundland making them the first Europeans to land in the Western Hemisphere. If you like history you'll enjoy this wonderful book.

Those interested in the Vikings will find this book informative and thought provoking. I expect the author's intriguing thesis regarding ballast stones will stimulate further investigation on the subject.

To answer the question "Who discovered America?", Danish author Niels Vinding provides original and inciteful evidence that Leif Ericksson landed in North America in 998, 500 years before Columbus. The Vikings left few written records, but Vinding does an accomplished job of presenting his theory, interpreting evidence from the Vinland Sagas, the accounts of the Norse settlement of Vinland. In addition, his impressive detective work uncovers original archeological evidence that Vinland is the Avalon peninsula of southern Newfoundland. The book leads the reader through seven voyages in a lively and engaging style. It's a pleasure to read such a stimulating work on such an important topic. Well designed, the many illustrations include maps and drawings in addition to color photographs of Viking artifacts. The pictures are well chosen and are reproduced with exceptionally fine clarity and rich colors. A timeline, and lists of books conclude the volume. Visually appealing and quite informative, the book will delight curious browsers as well as Viking scholars. Neils Vinding received his MBA from Stanford University. This book is the result of years of intensive study of the Greenland Norse and the Icelandic Sagas.

The fifth grade teachers at my school have used this book for a "read aloud" for several years. It has adventure, sympathetic characters, and action. The kids love it and the historical context helps them understand the challenges the Jamestown settlers faced as well as the havoc that they wrecked on the Native American population. It has been a great way to launch our unit on colonial America.

This hard-to-put down book tells the story of Rob, an English orphan, who is kidnapped and sold as an indentured servant to a cruel Tobacco farmer in colonial Virginia. The story is so well-paced and action-packed you don't even realize you're learning quite a bit about American history as you tear through the pages. An excellent choice for summer reading!

This hard-to-put down book tells the story of Rob, an English orphan, who is kidnapped and sold as an indentured servant to a cruel Tobacco farmer in colonial Virginia. The story is so well-paced and action-packed you don't even realize you're learning quite a bit about American history as you tear through the pages. An excellent choice for summer reading!

Virginia Bound is a great story! It grabs you quickly and makes you care about the characters. It's got suspense and adventure and hard hard decisions for the main character to make. Rob's choice ends up making this a book with an important moral, but rather than the book lecturing or seeming saccharine, it shows Rob's dilemma and his decision as part of his growing up-- just the kind of thing that makes kids feel grown up themselves.

This book is also amazing in the way it depicts the history-- not one bit boring, the author brings the time and place alive with amazing details she's gleaned from the best research on Virginia. Who knew that to grow tobacco people had to hoe dirt up over their leg until it reached their knee, jerk their foot out of the pile, and put the plant in that hole? Any kid who reads this book will know a whole lot more about hard labor, hard times, and the complicated history of the beginnings of our country than most adults do...and they won't even realize they're being taught.

One last note...don't think this is just for boys-- there's a strong female character to match Rob, and girls will enjoy her skill, courage, and intelligence.

This is a great story, compellingly told with simplicity and beauty. It also happens to be the best single book I've ever read on "organizational learning."

The "Walking People" left central Asia and walked across an ocean, over to another ocean and back to the great lakes. On their way, they had to learn to deal with an ever changing circumstance, both physical and social. In order to survive, they learned how to learn as a people more and more effectively.

This story deals with issues such as the balance between diversity and unity, how to honor individual styles of learning and use these to help the community, ageism, sexism, racism, cooperation and competition, the balance of long term goals and short term necessities, planning and improvisation, war and peace.

Are you beginning to get the picture? This should be read by everyone, but at least by anyone who teaches or manages people. If a CEO or Senator reads one book in this millennium to prepare for the next, this should be it.

Most of our historical evidence about the lives of our ancestors is in the form of tools, bones, fragments of pottery and cloth, and rock paintings. What was daily life really like before even these artifacts were tools? Perhaps something else did survive . . . In "The Walking People", Paula Underwood presents stories of real events lived by real people from the oral tradition of her people. Not a collection of mythological tales, they cover a span of history, geographical locations and events that is intellectuallly staggering and nearly impossible to put down. These are the stories of the Oneida people "from the beginning" which trace their intentional wanderings over three continents including how they crossed what is probably the Bering Strait, explore the events and decisions that made them who they are, and record some of their tantalizing encounters with other people. These are also teaching stories and can be understood on many levels intellectually and emotionally, individually and collectively. They can be seen as a straighforward historical account; an absolute literary delight; the unfolding of a people's culture and society; a presentation of the development of individuality (ego); a process of learning how to learn; an anthropological exlposion of possibilities; the evolution of scientific experimentation and evaluation; a description of ordinary living in various times; stories of individual lives and commitments - and so much more. I have read "The Walking People" cover to cover at least a dozen times, each immersion bringing fresh and expanding comprehension. The language used and the physical presentation on the page combine to make reading this book a nearly "auditory" experience. It invites the reader to walk with these people through time, participating in their experiences, sharing the tears of their misjudgments, the joy in their masterful accomplishments, and the relief that the laughter at their predicaments brings. It is a most extraordinary glimpse into the perceptions and thinking of real people in ancient and historical times. It is very difficult to describe the deep psychological effect of perceiving the actual voices and syntax of people who lived thousands and thousands of years ago - suddenly, "history" becomes an intimate, personal reality. Almost understated in terms of today's world of extremism, rampant emotionalism and dramatic egotistical conflicts, these stories carry a haunting impact quietly hidden in the simple, direct telling that spares nothing. I have no doubt that these stories have been kept accurately for millenia. This is the first presentation I have found that is a sharing of one Native American people's heritage; it has been my experience that such depth has either been lost altogether or is usually carefully preserved as part of the private, heartfelt identity of the Original People of America. Paula Underwood's generous recounting of the Oneida oral tradition is a stunning and manumental achievement in language and scope of material, a very special and unique gift to whoever cares to explore its pages. "The Walking People" blows the western world's catalog of knowledge to the winds, tatters our self-imposed limits regarding what is possible and how the possible may be accomplished, and rebuilds hope in a positive way - provided we can perceive the possibilities contained inthis true epic saga. It is a sharing of the soul for the soul, touching the essence of us all.

Sad, beautiful, wonderful, wise, haunting, and totally relevant to our global issues of change. Destructive paths happen easily. Creative paths are contingent.

This is the book that has been on my nightstand for the past several months. I read several pages each night. It is a big book, over 800 pages, written like a poem, and almost impossibly precious. The wisdom between its covers is astounding. For what this book teaches is something we, at this time in history, desperately need to know: how to start anew after devastation. How to be a whole people after we've been reduced to fragments. It teaches that the wisdom is within us, to survive, to begin again, to thrive. Hallelujah.

If you plan to visit the Northshore of Lake Superior, take this excellent book with you. It describes and rates on a five-star scale all the many waterfalls of the Northshore, helping you to plan your trip.

Cascade River State Park, Gooseberry Falls State Park, and Tettegouche State Park are must-see destinations, but there are more.

As someone who once lived about half a block from one of these waterfalls and visited about a dozen of the others, I must say that the descriptions are accurate, detailed, and helpful. I believe, however, that the Wallingas' estimations (on a one-star to five-star scale) of each waterfall's beauty are slightly inflated. I never saw a five-star waterfall on Minnesota's North Shore. That designation should be reserved for Gullfoss, Niagara, or the like. The falls that the Wallingas rank three or four, I would rank two or three -- and some things that they call waterfalls are just one-star rapids. But this is not a criticism, just an expression of difference of opinion.

My only real criticism is that the photos should be in color, not black-and-white, with many more full-page bleeds.

I recently spent 3-4 days on the North Shore hiking to some of the waterfalls that Eve and Gary had listed as their favorites in this book.

Their descriptions of each waterfall seemed right on. Directions were easy to follow, their rating of the hike difficulty seemed accurate, and they certainly had a good sense of what made a 5 star vs. a 2 star waterfall.

I am a photographer, and so the only thing I would have liked to see added was a little more commentary on how 'accessable' a particular falls was - i.e. if I could only see it from a pre-built deck, or if with waders I could get in the river and approach it from other angles.

However, without this book I certainly would not have had the time to find many of the falls that I did. It is a wonderful resource - I'd call it essential for anyone planning a sightseeing / hiking trip along the North Shore and will recommend it to my friends and fellow photographers.

There are numerous books about Minnesota's North Shore, but this new book manages to offer something not previously available. It concentrates exclusively on the waterfalls along the Minnesota North Shore, and I don't think there has been such a book before with this kind of information all in one place. Most importantly it includes literally every falls there is including many you won't read about elsewhere. Good directions and trail comments are included - I know we would have had found more difficulty finding some falls without it.

This book is very well written as well. Avoiding both dry commentary and flowery prose, the Wallingas write in an engaging conversational tone, that is nevertheless carefully constructed. It is a pleasure for me to pick up anytime and read at random.

If you love Lake Superior, I recommend this book very highly as one you should consider owning, rather than borrowing.

Upon seeing the title of Sarah Hill's Book, "Weaving New Worlds: Southeastern Cherokee Women and Their Basketry," one might think this is a book only about Indian baskets or a how-to manual for making baskets. Both of these assumptions would be far from the truth. "Weaving New Worlds" is a broad, masterful compilation of research and expression of ideas on Cherokee culture. Put simply and without hyperbole, it is one of the best books one will find on Cherokee History.

The book focuses on what has become the Eastern Band of Cherokees in western North Carolina. Though Hill writes an excellent history of the Cherokees prior to their forced removal by the federal government in the late 1830s, she does not attempt to tell any aspect of the story of the Cherokees who settled in Oklahoma. The strength of her work is in the creative chronology she provides and in her description of the environment of the southern Appalachian Mountains.

Hill divides her work into four chapters: Rivercane, White Oak, Honeysuckle, and Red Maple. These chapter names derive from the material Cherokee women used to weave their baskets. The author cleverly interweaves the shifts in Cherokee history with the shift in basket making and the materials from which the baskets were made.

The Prologue is a stand alone, worthy essay in itself. It describes with tremendous knowledge the plants and animals of the southern Appalachians and how the Cherokees used these resources. In reading Hills's Prologue, one feels they are diving into the nuts and bolts of history. There are parts of the Prologue and in Hill's writing on specific plants that are as good as historical writing gets.

It is rare to find a book this focused and replete with encyclopedic information. It is highly recommended for those interested in the history of the southern Appalachians, western North Carolina, or the Cherokees. Also, this book should be read by anyone vacationing to the Great Smoky Mountains. It will vastly increase one's understanding and appreciation of just what they are seeing when they cross into the nation's most visited national park.

This book is fantastic. Hill covers an array of subjects about Cherokee life, family, politics, beliefs, oral traditions, aesthetics - all relating to the central theme of basket-making. Well-researched and documented. While maintaining excellent scholarship, Hill write in a natural, understandable manner free of academic jargon. Essential to anyone studying Cherokee culture.

Using baskets, the oldest mother-to-daughter tradition still surviving among Cherokee women, Hill traces changes among Southeastern Cherokees and their environments over a 300-year period. Weaving New Worlds has just been awarded the Julia Cherry Spruill prize for the best book in Southern women's history published in 1997, and was described in the award as "beautifully written and brilliantly organized."

A reviewer in The Atlanta History Journal says this book is "destined to become a classic reference text to which future scholars of Native American material culture will always return." It is, the review continues, "keenly attuned to how basketry figures in the spiritual and material lives of the Southeastern Cherokee." I agree with the reviewer, but this book is more than a study of material culture, it is a history of women told by looking at their beautiful, enduring work with baskets. There is nothing like it for learning Southeastern Cherokee history.

With all the great Field Guides around it is becoming quite simple to identify a new bird.You are out birding and see a bird sitting atop a tree.You line it up in your bins,take note of the field marks,check your trusty guide,and Presto!You have just found a Painted Bunting.Now,let's crank it up a notch.You're driving along a back road,and SPLAT!!What was that?Now you're in the big league of bird identification.Here's where this book comes to the rescue.Yep! now you can stop the car and check out the characteristics of the splat and determine what bird paid you a visit.This book describes what matches your splat."Small,sometimes only the size of a grain of rice.The coiled,rather gaudy and squishy nucleus is delightfully encapsulated in a semi-opaque,frothy envelope."What you got here,my friend, is also a Painted Bunting;but indentified in a whole new way!However if this is what you got,"Messy and generous,with a definite tendency to splood.The thick,creamy envelope sometimes contains solids of bilious yellow (partly digested gristle and fat) that add a sprightly dash of color to the splay."Check the book,what you got this time is our old friend,the Turkey Vulture.
So,if you want to improve your image with your birding friends get hold of this book and amaze them at the next SPLAT.
Oh yeah;another thing,just in case that splat was with the compliments of a bat instead of a bird;this book will also help you make the differentiation.
A great gift for you or your birdwatching friend.

This is a short guidebook to birds with its smart tongue planted deep in its cheek. It's copiously illustrated with photographs of bird droppings (splays) on car windshields and instructions on how to tell what
species of bird they came from. As the authors say: "A knowledge of each splay is essential to fully describe and understand the variations in ornithological dejecta." It's largely by taking the subject exactly
that faux seriously, but then subverting it with the choice of topic and some very funny invented vocabulary, that they elicit laughs. Here, for instance, is one of their terms of art and its definition:

audibon: Soft sound made by avian dejecta as it strikes a windshield and forms a splay. Audi (l) sound, bon (fr) good, literally, good sound.

The book's kind of a one-trick pony, but a very amusing trick.

GRADE: B+

I'd never heard of this book (1991) til 2001. It's incredibly funny. Written in a pseudo-audobon style, each page has a perky 1x1" picture of the species of interest, and a sharp, color 4x4" photo of its supposed bird splat. (whether globby, loose, white, gray, yellow, small, large, starburst-like, etc). Very very funny.

This is a great book and has a great web site too, at, http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk./~design.machine-tanya/ Good book! Great site!

Like Peter I lived and went through total hell from a matron while I was in the same orphanage. After reading Peters book while the locust slept,I relived the same anger, as Peter indured.This book should be a must read by anyone,who plans on going into the socialwork field and know that this is truly a non fiction tragedy which happened.This is a story that took place a long time ago,but could still and does happen today.

This is a chilling, true-life account of a childhood that should have never been, and 17 years of life that would forever haunt the author, Peter Razor. Peter, an intelligent boy that was raised in an orphanage as a ward of the state, then placed in an abusive indentured farm home had a childhood that is reprehensible, and sadly true. Supposedly protected by the state, Peter became a boy who flinched from physical contact, and had no understanding of what a normal happy home should be like. Unlike Peter Razor, not all children were lucky enough to survive the abuse that could be found in state orphanages when Peter was growing up. Corporal punishment went unchecked, and Peter, an American Indian, also had the added disadvantage of prejudice thrown in. Eventually placed on a farm, his placement was not carefully monitored, and the abusive treatment with this family was never noted by the social worker who was suppose to be monitoring Peter's placement. While the Locust Slept, a Minnesota Book Award Winner, is a compelling, well written tale that reads like a novel, yet is sadly a true tale of a horrific childhood that was unchecked by the state that was suppose to be protecting him

I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Razor while on a trip to Cochiti Lake, New Mexico. After talking for a while he passed me a copy of his book and asked me to read it and then share it with others. I read the book cover-to-cover on the trip home and was amazed that the man I had talked to had once been the little boy in the book. Mr. Razor was a kind and gentle man that never revealed the scars from his childhood in any part of our conversations. America's inhumane treatment of the Indian people is well documented. This book offers graphic descriptions of individual cruelty that was fueled by ignorance and prejudice. I don't know if many human beings could have endured this sort of trauma and survived to be so kind. Peter is a truly incredible person and I would recommend his book to anyone.

My father as well was in the Owatonna "orphanage" which he termed as an "intournment camp/prison"! Babies and children were treated more tragically at this place than you could even imagine. Babies died for lack of "touch" and nurturing! Children were beaten, mauled, and oftentimes died as a result of such treatment. Peter Razor cites an insightfully true story of just SOME of the horific experiences of babies and children in this most insightful book on our country's past (AND EVEN PRESENT) ways of "Social Services" treating our "lost" children!! A MUST TO READ!

As an African American CPA since 1980, this book is very comprehensive in describing the trials and tribulations of our entry into the accounting profession. My father was born in 1927 and had wanted to become a CPA after hearing about Jesse Blayton. Due to the limitations described in this book, he never realized his dream. Because of his interest in accounting, I studied bookkeeping in high school and became hooked.

In 1974, I got very lucky and was admitted to the accounting program at North Carolina A&T State University. There I studied under Dr. Quiester Craig who is chronicled on page 111 on the book. Just as Craig said in his story, at that time, all our students were naive; however Dr. Craig established that the program at NC A&T would be geared toward preparing every accounting graduate to pass the CPA exam.

This book is a must read for every African American CPA and potential CPA and should be textbook material in every HBCU accounting program in the country. Again, against all odds, we have achieved remarkable things.

Hammond chronicles the stories of the remarkable individuals who blazed the trail for African-Americans in the accounting profession. Or I should say, began blazing the trail, because as Hammond points out it is still by far the most segregated profession. When most people hear "accounting" they think of something very dry and technical. But this book is far from that. You learn about the profession and how institutional racism operates, but always as a context for the amazing stories, struggles, and personalities that Hammond conveys. She obviously spent many hours interviewing these pioneers and she tells their stories with academic rigor, but also with compassion, respect, and a sense of humor.

From my vantage point as a black CPA, this book is at once inspiring and uplifting yet heartrending and depressing. After having read about the trials and tribulations of the pioneers of my profession and of my race(who were/are heroic in some sense), I feel compelled to take advantage of today's opportunity out of respect for what they've done to pave the way for those who have followed.

The author does a fantastic job of taking an erstwhile research paper and making it extremely enjoyable to read. This book is must reading for CPAs in general and black CPAs in particular.

Ok, so maybe I haven't read the book, but since I doubt this is going to break best seller records, I figured I could give some information about the author.

She was my accounting professor last semester in a class called Accounting Information Systems. Theresa is funny, engaging and most importantly a very passionate individual, especially about the struggle for racial equality.

She is undoubtedly the first person to do any research on the subject, and in her powerpoint presentation of the book she unravels an interesting tale of the business world's most caucasian profession. The African americans which are the subject of her narrative show themselves are driven by their interest in this niche profession long after all hope has vanished. The quirky personalities of her story tell a story that sheds light upon the grit of the human spirit.

Even though it was written in 1955, it was delightful to read of their journey and the things they saw. I felt like I was there with them. Lots of bird information, but even more history, conservation commentary and human frailty. Sorry when I finished it. Wanted them to continue through the interior of the USA.

The world of e-reviewing is a tolerant world, and exaggerations have an easy home there. But measured by the role it has played in people's lives, there is little hyperbole in identifying Peterson and Fisher's "Wild America," precisely fifty years old this year, as among the most important books produced in the twentieth century. In the 1950s and 1960s, the book found its way into school libraries all over America, where it has been read with awe and envy by the last three generations of would-be naturalists--read so intensively that many of us, decades later, can quote great passages by heart.
The book is a collaborative account of the biggest 'big year' up to that point ever undertaken in North America; the trip was planned by none other than Roger Tory Peterson, then (and still today, perhaps) the continent's best-known birder, and was intended as an introduction to America's natural history for James Fisher, an equally prominent British naturalist who had never visited this side of the Atlantic. "Wild America" was the result: a priceless document of the continent's natural riches seen through the eyes, the words and the illustrations of two gifted and interesting observers.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of Peterson and Fisher's trip, and the book is certain to be celebrated over and over in the press. Those who have not read it should by all means visit their library to borrow a well-worn copy; and those who have should take it in hand again, and be reminded of how important this text was in the birth of North America's birding culture as we know it today.

Let me just quote my favorite line from the book. It is when James Fisher, an Englishman, first sees the Grand Canyon:

"I went down there a few yards. The world ended; began again eight miles away. Between the ends of the world was a chasm."

Now I have never seen the Grand Canyon, but reading about it with such wonder through Mr. Fisher's eyes was extraordinary. It brought tears to my eyes. It goes to show how truly amazing and beautiful America is. I highly recommend this book, not just for the birds these two men see, but also for all the wonderful sights they come encounter. It made me want to retrace their route.

When I found this book at Third Place Books in Seattle in the summer of 2002, I had never heard of it, but, from the authors' reputation as naturalists and ornithologists, it looked like a good read. I discovered the book at the end of my camping journey to three national parks in Washington state and a one-week cruise to Alaska's Glacier Bay National Park and the main points of interest in beautiful southeastern Alaska. My jaunt to the natural areas of the Pacific Northwest and the Alexander Archipelago would be lame compared to the 20,000+ miles that Roger Peterson and James Fisher logged in on their comprehensive foray to "Wild America".

The authors embarked on their journey following the coast of the US with intermittent forays to the interior and a brief excursion to Mexico a year before the publication of the molecular structure of DNA as double helix. Rapid developments in our understanding of the molecular basis of life ushered in the molecular era of biology, which has ultimately led to the restructuring and overhauling of the way we teach biology and the way we explain, understand, and appreciate the complexities of life. Just when most students in biology these days are honed to the molecular and cellular basis of life--a reductionist view, so to speak--and less to the holistic and more traditional view of biology, what a refreshing change to learn from and be engrossed by the keen observations of two naturalists on the road and be taken back to an era when biology as natural history was respected as an academic field and an engaging pastime as well!

There are tons of information on birds in this book, but the authors also pay attention to mammals and other fauna, and then there is the flora (peculiar landmark plant species of the West stand out, like the agave, saguaro, ocotillo, Joshua Tree, Monterey cypress, coastal redwood, sequoia, sugar pine, lodgepole pine, and Douglas fir). There are also accounts of long-term inhabitants and indigenous peoples, and their culture and history. The illustrations are superb. The most remarkable part of the book, however, are the wholehearted commentaries on the purpose and values of our national parks and monuments. Since 1953, many of the national monuments they visited are now national parks. Roads have been paved, widened, and increased, and so have concessions and amenities, converting park villages into virtual towns and confronting many visitors with the same urban and suburban evils (traffic, congestion, to name a few) from which they try to escape by visiting national park areas. You can try hard to hope that James Fisher criticizes the way national parks are run, but you don't find that in the book. Notwithstanding this, it is amusing that many facts about the national monuments and parks still apply today and that these places can make the same impressions today, mainly because we try hard to keep these natural treasures intact for future generations. The British naturalist's gratitude to Americans for the designation and preservation of national parks and optimism for their stewardship is a sharp contrast to Edward Abbey's cynical attitude towards the National Park Service and disdain for tourists.

The book concludes with a powerful statement that speaks of Fisher's gratitude to Americans and optimism for "Wild America": "And this is what I have tried to do--to tell of Wild America, and say that never have I seen such wonders or met landlords so worthy of their land. They have had, and still have, the power to ravage it; and instead have made it a garden". Certainly the power of his statement would not have been lost on people who deeply appreciate natural America and care to preserve our astounding natural heritage.