Wonderlandscape

I'm kind of a national parks geek and if you're thinking about reading this, you probably are too. If you have an average or less than average interest in the national parks, just move on by.

OK hello. I overall enjoyed this book, which is basically a series of essays focusing on different aspects of Yellowstone National Park in history and popular culture. I learned some really interesting stuff (I loved the chapters about “parkitecture” and the specific style that's become associated with National Parks, and stuff about bears and wildfires and how those policies are shaped were very interesting.)

A couple of missteps:
- I thought the chapter about Yogi Bear's Jellystone Park causing Yellowstone to have an elevated role in popular culture was...interesting but also a stretch? And also he spent some time interviewing 2 random people about how much they liked Yogi bear as a kid and I thought it was going to be like “and now...they're park rangers” but they're not, I guess they're just randos who liked Yogi Bear. One of them has never even been to actual Yellowstone. Couldn't he have found a park ranger who liked Yogi Bear to talk to??
- Throughout the book he barely talked about Native Americans, but occasionally would refer to a “Nez Perce hostage incident” like the reader was supposed to be familiar with it, but didn't explain it until later on in the book. But also later on in the book he joked that maybe people reading this book are confused about the difference between Yellowstone and Yosemite, so like...this is clearly aimed at a casual-ish reader and not someone who's already an expert in the park's history. So explain that thing the first time it comes up jeez
- Anyway so throughout the book it was bugging me that he so so barely talked about Native Americans, since I know that in general tribes were often dislocated by national parks etc...and then I got to the epilogue and he said (direct quote) “I was pained to spend so little of this book discussing Native Americans. But I was looking at what the wider culture had valued through American history, and it had not valued indigenous people.” OK SURE BUDDY BUT NOW YOU'RE PART OF THE PROBLEM?!? I know he's talking about its role in popular culture/history but the absence of something can still be commented on.....or you could talk about how the park was viewed in tribal histories....or something?!
- also in the epilogue he was basically like “lol why is everyone so obsessed with the supervolcano, it's probably not going to kill us get over it”

ugh just take us now supervolcano

ANYWAY again I mostly enjoyed reading this book just got bugged by those things.

Also it was good at including photos of everything that I wanted there to be photos of, but they're all in the middle plates without necessarily indicating (“see photo in the middle plate”) so I'd just have to optimistically flip to the middle of the book hoping he'd replicate for example the Ansel Adams photo he'd just described.

Anyway if you're only going to read ONE National Parks book I'd rec The Hour of Land by Terry Tempest Williams over this–she does a way better job of including Native Americans and also just writes about the parks so beautifully and honestly probably kind of ruined me for other parks books. But if you already read that and you're that big of a nerd that you want to read another national parks book, hell yeah this one will do.