The National Parks: America's Best Idea
by Dayton Duncan, Ken Burns
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Book Summary Information
Author: Dayton Duncan, Ken BurnsBrand: Ken Burns
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-09-08
ISBN: 0307268969
Number of pages: 432
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Book Reviews of The National Parks: America's Best Idea
Book Review: An absolute treasure
Summary: 5 Stars
Let me first point out that I'm just reviewing the companion book to Ken Burns' PBS show--having not (yet!) seen the show I make no attempt at discussing how it relates to the TV program. This is simply a look on how the book holds up on its own merits.
And let me say it is an eye-popper! As a coffee table book alone, it succeeds wildly, with all kinds of stunning photos that make you want to grab the kids and hit the road. What is particularly enjoyable is that it uses a whole range of illustrations--besides glorious contemporary photos of these magnificent landscapes, there are fascinating historic photos in B&W and photos of the various cranks, caretakers and visionaries whose lives were so deeply entwined with the park. There are also a number of beautifully reproduced photos of paintings from the Hudson River school of painting back in the mid-1800s that not only sparked interest in America's landscapes but created one of the first great artistic movements in our country.
And as always, it's amazing how landscapes can communicate such profound, and profoundly human emotions, even when there are no people depicted. The simple visual of a lone tree, buried under a heavy canopy of snow and placed against a blank winter landscape can convey loneliness on such a powerful unconscious level. Or how a sunrise on the rim of the Grand Canyon can convey majesty beyond any human description. Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous.
But what makes this so much better than a photo essay of great landscapes is the wonderful written content that frames the illustrations. The text brings these magnificent parks back into the realm of human beings. Again and again we read about how determined individuals, communities, businesses and even bureaucrats *created* these parks, fighting tooth and nail to preserve these natural wonders for us all. Along the way we meet all kinds of fascinating people, and learn to admire their fortitude--or chuckle at their eccentricities. The text is well assembled and flows smoothly, and is as large in its scope as the Grand Canyon itself. Absolutely riveting.
But this also brilliantly shows the character of Americans--we the people. This is a tour-de-force civics lesson on patriotism, of making the country better and making the government serve us, and should be joyously read by every American. Which, I bet, was precisely Ken Burns' goal all along.
This is a book that everyone--left, right, northerner, southerner, African-American, Latino, Caucasian... EVERYONE--should love and cherish. What an incredible country we share! And what a spectacular book that does justice to it!
Summary of The National Parks: America's Best Idea
The companion volume to the twelve-hour PBS series from the acclaimed filmmaker behind The Civil War, Baseball, and The WarAmerica?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.
Amazon Exclusive: Joseph J. Ellis Reviews The National Parks
Educated at the College of William and Mary and Yale University, Joseph J. Ellis is a Ford Foundation Professor of History at Mount Holyoke College. His Founding Brothers won the Pulitzer Prize in 2001, and American Sphinx earned the 1997 National Book Award. His latest work, American Creation, was published in 2007. Read Ellis's exclusive Amazon guest review of The National Parks: America's Best Idea:
If Ken Burns?s upcoming documentary film on America?s National Parks is as good as the book laying open before me, he has another huge winner. Of course the book, entitled The National Parks: America?s Best Idea, is intended as a companion to the film, but as I see it--literally--the book permits the eye and mind to linger over the truly breathtaking pictures in a more meditative way that film does not allow. The result is almost elegiac, producing the same kind of goose bumps that Burns created in his early work on the Brooklyn Bridge and the Civil War.
Burns has been chronicling the American experience for over thirty years, and I think it?s fair to say that no one has influenced more living Americans to think about our history as a people and a nation. His dominant themes have been space and race, his persistent question deceptively simple: who are we? I think The National Parks is his masterpiece on the space theme. And the message that kept whispering to me in these pages was that whoever we are has been decisively shaped by the sheer physicality of the continent we inhabit.
It never occurred to me before, but Americans invented the idea institutionalized in our National Parks. Namely, as Burns puts it in the introduction, ?for the first time in human history, land--great sections of our natural landscape--was set aside, not for kings or noblemen or the very rich, but for everyone, for all time.? As Wallace Stegner once observed, and the book?s subtitle echoes, this may have been ?America?s best idea.? Burns links the idea to Jefferson?s magic words in the Declaration of Independence (i.e. ?We hold these truths...?), our quasi-sacred text on human freedom, which takes on an almost spiritual resonance amidst the vistas of Yosemite or Yellowstone.
Dayton Duncan, Burns's longtime colleague, has provided most of the text, which is designed to cast a spell that matches the wonder of the stunning illustrations. The book looks luxurious and feels expensive, but this visit to the National Parks is a great deal.--Joseph J. Ellis
(Photo © Jim Gipe)
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