|
MICHAEL MILSTEIN COLUMN Vacation with Yellowstone books Balmy summer days were made for good books and while there are enough books about Yellowstone National Park to fill the entire summer, here are some of my favorites. Many are either new, newly available in paperback or newly revised.
By Richard Bartlett (Minerva Press, paperback, $13.95) Richard Bartlett is the author of Yellowstone: A Wilderness Besieged, probably the best and most thoughtful history of tourism in Yellowstone National Park. Here he has turned his attention to fiction, dreaming up a lively and sometimes ribald romance set in Yellowstone during the 1920s.# He clearly has fun with the park that he knows so well, surprising his characters with Yellowstone's idiosyncrasies: An amorous couple lounging in a hot spring is nearly scalded when an earthquake suddenly turns the quiet pool into a geyser. On the very same night a curious bear falls through the roof of a tent and onto the bed of another nuzzling couple. Bartlett's descriptions are rich and accurate, portraying different echelons of park travelers that ring true even today: the well-off spend their vacations in pricey park hotels, while those of lesser financial standing make do in tent campgrounds. Most of all, though, Yellowstone Holiday is simply a fun read, good entertainment played out against the greatest backdrop nature could devise.
 Gazette photo/DAVID GRUBBS Books on Yellowstone National Park can provide visitors with a deeper understanding of this unique place.
By Paul Schullery (Mariner Books, paperback $14) It's difficult, while standing in a crowd in front of Old Faithful, to tell what Yellowstone really means to us. We often define or judge the park based on our expectations of it, but its real value in many ways hovers far beyond our narrow expectations. In Searching for Yellowstone, newly available in paperback, consummate park historian Paul Schullery slices through human fanfare and rhetoric that surrounds so many park issues today and traces Yellowstone's true history in a methodical and understated way that lets the park speak for itself for a change. If you come to this book with an open mind, Schullery may open it even wider.
By William J. Broad (Touchstone, paperback, $15) A book about the ocean? Indeed, the deep sea may lie many hundreds of miles from Yellowstone, but the two places have much in common, especially under a microscope. There you see the tiny microbes that live in Yellowstone's hot springs and their close relatives that dwell among hot springs on the ocean floor.# Broad, a New York Times science writer, leads the reader into a dark and hidden world as mysterious as outer space and introduces the wondrous creatures that lurk there. The Universe Below, now available in paperback, eventually touches on Yellowstone, which in many ways remains just as strange and curious as anything the deep oceans could produce.
Text by Erwin A. Bauer Photographs by Erwin and Peggy Bauer (Voyageur Press, paperback, $19.95) A revised coffee-table book by the Bauers, well-known photographers with a long history in Yellowstone. Marvelous color photographs of wildlife and scenery and a text with a personal touch makes this one of the best and most economical park picture-books.
By Lee H. Whittlesey (Roberts Rinehart, paperback, $16.95) This Yellowstone cult favorite is both chilling and engrossing. Each chapter covers a different cause of death: There's death from poison gas, wildlife, tumbling over cliffs, hot springs and just about any other fatal turn one can imagine. Each death is covered in a careful, detached style that provides enough details for the reader to draw the very important conclusion that the wilderness is not always kind. Of course that, in itself, is part of its allure.#
By T. Scott Bryan (University Press of Colorado, paperback, $19.95) Now in its third edition and completely revised, this geyser Bible remains the definitive guide to Yellowstone's erupting thermal features. Detailed maps of each of Yellowstone's geyser basins and colorful descriptions of every known geyser make the book both easy to read and easy to use when stalking eruptions of even the most elusive geysers. A fascinating list of all the world's other known geyser regions, many of which have suffered from geothermal development, makes the reader realize all the more what a special place Yellowstone really is.#
By Todd Wilkinson (Johnson Books, $18) This is not a book about Yellowstone, but anyone interested in Yellowstone will probably also be interested in this about what goes on behind the scenes in natural resource agencies. One chapter in particular centers on David Mattson, a champion of Yellowstone grizzlies punished for not toeing the government line, and even wanders into the debate over reconstruction of the North Fork Highway between Cody and Yellowstone Park. With all sides cranking up their fax machines to fire off press releases about the new National Park Service proposal to prohibit snowmobiles in parts of Yellowstone this winter, Science Under Siege is more relevant than ever.
By Judith L. Meyer (Rowman & Littlefield, $26.95) This is a departure from the many books that focus on Yellowstone's natural history. Meyer, instead, traces the park's human history and the development of images that first captured the public's attention and led to establishment of the first national park. Most of the book is quite scholarly and analytical, gaining momentum when Meyer attempts to delve into the minds of the first explorers to record and stand in amazement at Yellowstone's wonders. Illustrated with many early drawings of the park, The Spirit of Yellowstone is not exactly light reading, but is a must for any serious student of the park.
By Scott McMillion (Falcon, $14.95) This may not be the best book to take with you to read in bear country. Better: Read it at home before you leave and give it time to sink in. The real value of this book comes not in the gripping narrative of bear attacks all over the West and Alaska, although the graphic stories hold your attention like a vise, but in the respect it generates for perhaps the most respectable wild animal of our time. McMillion presents a point of view without clobbering the reader with it, so the considered reader can come away from the book not with a fear of grizzlies but with a healthy respect for them.#
by Thomas McNamee (Henry Holt, paperback, $13.95) Residents this reason have heard lots about wolves, but Thomas McNamee brings a fresh perspective to the story. He was a part-time rancher himself while writing this captivating book, but was also drawn to the wolves more deeply than he had first realized.# McNamee himself is a character in this book, giving it an inviting and personal air, but does not force his views on the reader. He shows the reader a federal wildlife agent tracking a wolf-killer outside of Red Lodge and even opens the window on curious rivalries and tensions between agencies involved in various chapters of the wolf story. Parts of the book are almost dramatic in their intensity, while others slow the pace as the wolves romp and play.
|
