Craig Olson Books Newsletter

National Parks

It was inevitable. 

National Parks are under siege once again.

Hiring freezes,  threats to take back crucial infrastructure funding for maintenance backlog projects currently underway, reducing tracts of protected lands, and opening more Federal lands to extractive industries.

Seems as though anything is okay as long as it serves the oligarchs. 

The National Parks are for everyone.  Can they be overcrowded?  Yes.  Are there legitimate concerns about access for under served communities due to the costs of actually getting to the parks?  Yes.

Like any system, it's not perfect.

But when you enter a park it doesn't matter how you identify, if you were born in this country, your religion, or if you pass or fail any type of litmus test.  You pay your admission -- and many are free -- and you have the same access as someone living off a trust fund or the relative of a politician.  Those designations don't matter and they shouldn't.

I've often quoted Wallace Stegner who famously said that the National Parks are "America's Best Idea."  I can't agree more or quote it enough.  Can you imagine not having them?  Are we going to have more Glen Canyons? Fewer Yellowstones and more Yellowstone Clubs?

Treasured Lands, by Q. T. Luong, is one of my favorite books.  It combines two great loves, National Parks and landscape photography.  Mr. Luong traveled to every National Park over more than a decade and photographed them all with his old-school, large format camera.  His work is breathtaking. 

 

Luong, Treasured Lands (2016)

Born to Vietnamese parents in Paris, Luong emigrated to the United States after completing his PhD in computer science.  Our National Parks captured his heart.  In 2007 he left the field of computer science to be a full-time photographer. Q. T. Luong is an immigrant who pursued this dreams.

What a treasure he has provided for us.

So now I will step down from my soapbox, wipe my brow, and tell you that National Parks continue to capture my heart.  Below are some highlights from our inventory, to see all of our National Park items, please click here:  National Parks.

As always, the next time you're in the area make it a point to visit Craig Olson Books at 99 Main Street in Belfast, Maine, where we have a large selection of books in all subjects, and a few hundred on architecture, art, and design.

~Craig

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Udall, Stewart; Kennedy, John F. (Introduction).
The Quiet Crisis.
New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963.
Hardcover. First Edition. First Printing. xiii, 209 pp. Slight wear and scuffing to dust jackets, small chips at edges, bumping to corners, small losses at head and foot of spine, now in mylar cover. Blue cloth boards with a whisper of soiling along the top edge, spotting on foredges of text block, clean within.

Although other Secretaries of the Department of the Interior wrote books, this is the only one released to a popular audience during the Secretary's tenure. A national bestseller, it became one of the imporant books of the environmental movement. Stewart Udall (1920-2010) has the distinction of being the longest tenured Secretary of the Interior, serving the entirety of both John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson's presidencies. Inscribed by Udall on the first free endpaper in the year of publication.
(#30799)
Price: $100.00  
30799
Barlow, J. [John] W.; Heap, D. P.
An Engineer Report of a Reconnaissance of the Yellowstone River in 1871.
Washington DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1872.
Hardcover. First Edition. Extract from the Congressional Record. 43 pp. 8vo. First and last page of report of detached from text block, which is held tenuously by the original spinal glue from the volume from which this was removed earlier in its life. Full folding map tipped onto rear page is in Very Good condition and likely the reason for the detachment of the final page. [Howes 145].

An important document in National Park history as an early detailed report on the Yellowstone River, published one month after Yellowstone was established as the United States' first National Park.
(#31385)
Price: $350.00  
31385
Luong, QT; Duncan, Dayton (Foreword).
Treasured Lands: A Photographic Odyssey Through America's National Parks.
Petaluma, CA: Cameron Company, 2016.
Hardcover. First Edition. First Printing. 455 pp. Oblong Folio. Clean, crisp copy with dust jacket in mylar cover.
(#31378)
Price: $75.00  
31378
Roberts, Ann Rockefeller.
Mr. Rockefeller's Roads: The Untold Story of Acadia's Carriage Roads and Their Creator.
Camden, ME: Down East Books, 1990.
Hard Cover. First Edition. First Printing. 166 pp. 4to. Light scuffing to dust jacket from shelf wear; small, closed tears at head of dust jacket, head and foot of spine as well as head and foot of rear panel, now in mylar cover.

Signed by the author, a granddaughter of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., on the half-title page. A scarce book on John D. Rockefeller's system of carriage roads built for what is now Acadia National Park.
(#23730)
Price: $75.00  
23730
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