Frommers Yellowstone Grand Teton National Parks or Great Plains

Frommer's Yellowstone & Grand Teton National Parks

Author: Eric Peterson

Frommer's Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks is packed with all the facts, tips and descriptions you need to have perfect park vacation, in a pocket size guide:

• The most memorable park experiences, from Old Faithful and Mammoth Hot Springs, to Snake River raft trips.
• Great places to stay in and near the parks, ranging from historic lodges to family-friendly motels—plus a complete campground guide for each park.
• A fully illustrated nature guide to help you spot and identify bald eagles, bison, wildflowers, and more.
• The best hikes, from ranger-led interpretive walks to challenging backcountry overnights.
• What to see and do outside of the parks: rodeos, chuckwagon feeds, IMAX nature films, an elk preserve, Jackson Hole’s bars and boutiques, and more.
• Detailed, accurate park and trail maps

Great Plains: America's Lingering Wild

Author: Michael Forsberg

The Great Plains were once among the greatest grasslands on the planet. But as the United States and Canada grew westward, the Plains were plowed up, fenced in, overgrazed, and otherwise degraded. Today, this fragmented landscape is the most endangered and least protected ecosystem in North America. But all is not lost on the prairie. Through lyrical photographs, essays, historical images, and maps, this beautifully illustrated book gets beneath the surface of the Plains, revealing the lingering wild that still survives and whose diverse natural communities, native creatures, migratory traditions, and natural systems together create one vast and extraordinary whole.

 

Three broad geographic regions in Great Plains are covered in detail, evoked in the unforgettable and often haunting images taken by Michael Forsberg. Between the fall of 2005 and the winter of 2008, Forsberg traveled roughly 100,000 miles across 12 states and three provinces, from southern Canada to northern Mexico, to complete the photographic fieldwork for this project, underwritten by The Nature Conservancy. Complementing Forsberg’s images and firsthand accounts are essays by Great Plains scholar David Wishart and acclaimed writer Dan O’Brien. Each section of the book begins with a thorough overview by Wishart, while O’Brien—a wildlife biologist and rancher as well as a writer—uses his powerful literary voice to put the Great Plains into a human context, connecting their natural history with man’s uses and abuses.

 

The Great Plains are a dynamic but often forgotten landscape—overlooked, undervalued, misunderstood, and in desperateneed of conservation. This book helps lead the way forward, informing and inspiring readers to recognize the wild spirit and splendor of this irreplaceable part of the planet.

 

Library Journal

Comprising 1,000,000 square miles and stretching 1800 miles from southern Canada to northern Mexico, the American Great Plains is one of the world's largest grassland ecosystems. Increasingly, the biodiversity of this historically resilient region is threatened by human population growth, agriculture, and climate change. In an effort to address the environmental plight of his native region, Nebraska-based photographer Forsberg has created an exquisite, bittersweet love song to the Great Plains. This magnificent pictorial collection represents three years of field work, and every image is worth lingering over. Readers unfamiliar with the Great Plains will appreciate historical geographer David Wishart's extensive introduction, which illuminates the region's often overlooked significance in American history. Award-winning novelist O'Brien (The Contract Surgeon) contributes a series of short essays reflecting his trademark mix of sentiment and cynicism, and the lyrical foreword by American poet laureate Ted Kooser is not to be missed. VERDICT Essential for readers interested in Midwestern history, ecology, and wildlife; fans of Midwestern literature will also enjoy.—Kelsy Peterson, Prairie Village, KS