These American Lands: Parks, Wilderness, and the Public Lands: Revised and Expanded Edition

Over 634 million acres of the United States -- nearly a million square miles -- are federally owned. These American Lands is both a history and a celebration of that inheritance. First published in 1986, the book was hailed by Wallace Stegner as "the only indispensable narrative history of the public lands." This completely revised and updated edition is an unsurpassed resource for everyone who cares about, visits, or works with public land in the United States. With over 75 pages of new material, the volume covers: national parks national forests national resource lands wildlife refuges designated wildernesses wild and scenic rivers Alaska lands national trails Each chapter outlines the history of the unit of public lands under discussion, clarifies the resource use and policy conflicts that are currently besetting it, and provides a detailed agenda of management, expansion, and preservation goals.

About the Author

Dyan Zaslowsky is a free-lance writer and New York Times correspondent who lives in Evergreen, Colorado, with her husband and two children. She is the author of numerous articles on the environment and other subject for such magazines as Ameerican Heritage, Atlantic Monthly, Audobon, and Wilderness, and at the time was published, was working on a biography of Rosalie Edge, a conservation pioneer.

T.H. Watkinsis former senior editor of American Heritage. He is author of numerous books, among them being a prize-winning biography of FDR's Interior Secretary, Harold L. Ickes, entitled The Great Depression: America in the 1930s.