National Parks of America
by David Muench (Photographer) and Stewart L. Udall & James R. Udall (Text)

Publisher:  Graphic Arts Center Publishing Company
ISBN:  1558681248

If it is true that a picture is worth a thousand words, then a picture of a national park must be worth at least five thousand. Never was this truer than in a publication entitled National Parks of America, a 224-page pictorial tour of 43 of our national parks. Whether your interest is photography, wildlife viewing, or like me, you have a passion for exploring our national parks, you will draw inspiration from the images in National Parks of America. As photographer David Muench says, “hopefully these photographs may help to rekindle the curiosity, intuition, and imagination in discovering the beauty in our national parks.”

David Muench is a thirty-year veteran of landscape photography, specializing in national parks and wilderness areas. He uses various formats ranging from large format (4”x 5”) to small format (35mm) to capture the images seen in this book. His park-by-park pictorial tour will take you from the limestone columns of Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky to the crashing waves on Mount Desert Island in Acadia National Park in Maine. Both the grandeur and subtlety of landscape are evident, from the pinnacles and spires at Utah’s Arches to saw grass prairie of the Everglades in South Florida. Rich texture and colors of flora are captured throughout book, including the miniature landscape of berries and red flowers of Alaska’s Denali and the sea of wildflowers at Logan Pass in Montana’s Glacier National Park.

The outstanding collection of annotated photographs is accompanied by 15-page essay entitled “A Gift to the Future,” which summarizes the history of the national park system and explores some of the challenges it faces, from carrying capacity to inadequate funding. Written by Stewart Udall (Secretary of the Interior from 1961-1969) and James Udall, (nature writer), the passages describe the events and personalities that were responsible for the establishment of Yellowstone as our country’s first national park in 1872, Teddy Roosevelt sleeping under the stars at Yosemite in 1903, and the authorization of Everglades National Park, a landmark effort to preserve an area for its ecological setting rather than just its scenic features.

As you read National Parks of America and explore its many photographs, it is difficult not to think of the National Park System as one of the crowning achievement of nation’s history, with each of its parks as a priceless resource that we must work hard to preserve as part of our national heritage. If you love national parks, then pick up a copy of the book and do what I’ve done: put it on your coffee table. You’ll never tire of looking through the pages, reminiscing about places you’ve visited, and gaining inspiration for your next visit to a national park.

Darren Smith, your Guide for U.S. National/State Parks