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    The National Parks: America's Best Idea

    3.2 104

    by Dayton Duncan, Ken Burns


    Paperback

    $35.00
    $35.00

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    • ISBN-13: 9780375712104
    • Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
    • Publication date: 05/03/2011
    • Pages: 432
    • Sales rank: 151,936
    • Product dimensions: 9.10(w) x 10.80(h) x 1.40(d)

    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. Ken Burns, director and producer of The National Parks, founded his own documentary company, Florentine Films, in 1976. His films include The War, Jazz, Baseball, and The Civil War, which was the highest-rated series in the history of American public television. His work has won numerous prizes, including the Emmy and Peabody Awards, and two Academy Award nominations. He received a Lifetime Achievement Emmy Award in 2008. He lives in Walpole, New Hampshire.

    Table of Contents

    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
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    .

    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 importance and splendors of the individual parks: from Haleakala in Hawaii to Acadia in Maine, from Denali in Alaska to the Everglades in Florida, from Glacier in Montana to Big Bend in Texas. And they introduce us to a diverse cast of compelling characters—both unsung heroes and famous figures such as John Muir, Theodore Roosevelt, and Ansel Adams—who have been transformed by these special places and committed themselves to saving them from destruction so that the rest of us could be transformed as well.

    The National Parks
    is a glorious celebration of an essential expression of American democracy.

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    From the Publisher
    Praise for the PBS series:

    “Stunning and restorative, like the parks themselves.” —Timothy Egan, The New York Times

    “A masterful historic document, a vivid portrait of the land set against the stories of those who worked to acquire it and then protect it against those who still would dismantle or compromise it.” —David Hinckley, New York Daily News

    “Beautiful and erudite . . . Underneath its wonder, The National Parks is really about how Americans learned (or failed to learn) proper stewardship of nature.” —Hank Stuever, The Washington Post


    From the Trade Paperback edition.
    Library Journal
    08/01/2014
    Based on Burns's film series, which traces the history of national parks in the United States. Different voices are used for longer quotations; despite the missing visuals, the production gets the job done admirably.

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