Loving and Criticizing the US National Parks

by Mary E. Stuckey
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7 books
I grew up in the national parks, and like the rest of my family, I’m a total national park nerd. During the pandemic shutdown, I started reading books about the history of the park system and individual parks and ended up writing a book about them. This book list contains some of my favorite books about the parks—books I learned from and enjoyed. There are books here about the history of the parks and the park system, books about the flaws and shortcomings, books that made me angry, and books that inspired me. If you care about the national parks at all, there’s something here for you.
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National Parks

The American Experience
Alfred Runte, 2010
Alfred Runte is the most famous historian of the national parks. This is an immensely readable history, with lovely pictures and photographs. He takes a slightly romanticized view of the parks as the country’s “best idea” (he was an advisor for Ken Burns’s documentary on the parks), and is a constant and persuasive advocate for them. A great place to start learning about the parks and the park system.

To Conserve Unimpaired

The Evolution of the National Park Idea
Robert B. Keiter, 2013
This book offers a great discussion of the contradictions at the heart of the Park Service and how it has sought to manage them. The difficulties of preservation in the context of tourism, for instance, is a real issue for the NPS. He looks at the parks variously as they have evolved from being considered sacred spaces, playgrounds, laboratories, commodities, and so on, and notes the different ways important tensions have been resolved (or not) over time and how they continue to affect the parks.

Battling for the National Parks

George B. Hartzog, Jr., 1993
Hartzog was one of the most important directors of the National Park Service, and this book tells the story of his time there and the changes at one of its most pivotal moments. I have different interpretations of some of the park sites than he does (especially the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, now Gateway Arch National Park) but his book is readable and offers one of the best insider accounts of the Park Service.

National Parks Forever

Fifty Years of Fighting and a Case for Independence
Jonathan B. Jarvis, T. Destry Jarvis, 2022
These brothers both worked in and around the parks for decades, one in the NPS, the other as a conservationist often critical of it, and their book is a super readable discussion of the joys and challenges of working for and with the park’s adjacent bureaucracies. For people who don’t really understand how the parks are managed, this offers real insight into those processes.

American Indians and National Parks

Robert H. Keller, Michael F. Turek, 1999
This important book focuses on the struggles Indigenous people have faced concerning the national parks, with special attention to dispossession, hunting rights, cultural appropriation and interpretation, and sacred sites. They detail these by looking at single parks across various regions (Glacier, Mesa Verde, Everglades, Apostle Islands, etc.), which illuminates both national history and the history of specific parks as well. A really good study of the parks that makes it hard to consider them a public good without wondering about the unequally divided costs of the parks.

Dispossessing the Wilderness

Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks
Mark David Spence, 1999
Like the Keller and Turek book, this one is about the establishment of national parks on land appropriated from Indigenous peoples. It problematizes the whole idea of “wilderness preservation” and the national park idea by examining their consequences for Indigenous people. It concentrates on Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Glacier. Also like the Keller and Turek book, it’s a hard one for people who want to claim the parks as an unequivocal good thing.

America's National Park System

The Critical Documents
Lary M. Dilsaver, 2016
This is a terrific resource for park geeks. It’s a collection of primary documents—laws, court cases, self-studies by the NPS, and so on. It’s not a narrative, although he does provide quick introductions to every section, and ends with a discussion of important court cases.