As the popularity of the national parks grows, so do the challenges of visiting and managing them. This innovative book uses crowdsourcing - postings by park visitors on a range of social media sites - to start 100 conversations on issues associated with visiting and managing the national parks. The authors then use their experience and expertise to prepare short, plainspoken, and engaging essays that respond to the postings and complete the conversations. The book is written for park visi...

How much can we use the environment without spoiling what we find so valuable about it? Determining the carrying capacity of parks and related areas is a perennial question whose urgency grows each year as the number of visits continues to increase. Parks and Carrying Capacity represents a comprehensive assessment of the issue, as it:offers a historical and conceptual treatment of carrying capacitydescribes and illustrates research approaches for assessing carrying capacity, ...

Parks and People describes fifteen years of research at Maine’s Acadia National Park, conducted by Robert E. Manning, his colleagues, and students. The book is organized into three parts. Part I addresses indicators and standards of quality for park resources and the visitor experience. Part II describes efforts to monitor indicator variables. Part III outlines and assesses management actions designed to maintain standards of quality. The book concludes with a discussion of the implication...

In the 1990s, influenced by the deconstructionist movement in literary theory and trends toward revisionist history, a cadre of academics and historians led by William Cronon began raising provocative questions about ideas of wilderness and the commitments and strategies of the contemporary environmental movement. While these critiques challenged some cherished and widely held beliefs -- and raised the hackles of many in the environmental community -- they also stimulated an important and ...

Contents: A.M. CHISHOLM A Thousand a Plate A.M. WILLIAMSON The Eccentricity of Fleetwood ACHMED ABDULLAH The Home-Coming ARTHUR TRAIN The Escape of Wilkins ARTHUR TRAIN The Governor-General's Trunk BUCK CONNOR Get Your Man CHARLES BEADLE John O'Damn CHARLES E. VAN LOAN Water Stuff E.NESBIT The Dwellers EDWARD S. ELLIS A Battle in the Air EDWARD S. ELLIS An Unpleasant Companion EDWARD S. ELLIS Lost in a Blizzard EDWARD S. ELLIS Lost in the South Sea F. HOPKINSON SMITH Captain Joe FORREST CR...

An author’s talents may seem obvious and indisputable as they move words and ideas into gathered phrases and stories.But where do these ideas and stories come from? A lonely thought that suddenly gathers form? An inspiration from a Muse? A suggestion from an everyday event?Perhaps in the case of their darker, more malevolent stories, other forces are at work. They help to nourish single words into sentences and paragraphs that ease themselves from the shadows and are sudden...

Throughout the long centuries of human history is the want, and the need, to share information, to exchange ideas and for that knowledge and experience, for curiosity and learning, to be the basis of a civil society.In literature the ambition is much narrower. In order to be known, to be popular, you had to be published. And for that people had to know you existed and your ideas worth reading. Obviously for most of humanity’s time people couldn’t read and texts couldn’t be publishe...

Walks of a Lifetime in America’s National Parks: Extraordinary Hikes in Exceptional PlacesWalk the national parks and find out for yourself why they’re “America’s best idea” and why walking is the richest way to experience and appreciate these iconic places. There can be no better guides than Bob and Martha Manning, longtime Hiking Ambassadors for the American Hiking Society and life-long stalwarts of the National Park System. In this book, the Mannings introduce and describe all t...

Walking is simple, but it can also be profound. In an increasingly complex and frantic world, walking can help simplify and focus our lives, is an elegantly sustainable form of recreation, deepens our understanding and appreciation of the world’s great cultural landscapes, stimulates our thinking, and makes us healthier and happier in the process. In Walks of a Lifetime from Around the World, Bob and Martha Manning invite readers to join the walking community. The heart of the boo...

There are twenty-five World Heritage Sites scattered across the United States. World Heritage Sites are the most important natural and cultural areas around the world; these are the places that the United Nations, and the 167 countries it represents, have recognized as the most important contributions to the heritage of humanity. World Heritage Sites are premier visitor destinations, yet most people are not familiar with the World Heritage...

Walk the World’s Greatest TrailsTo walk is to discover, from those first halting steps as a child to walking the world’s greatest long-distance trails. Experience breathtaking coastlines, mountain ranges, historic landscapes, wilderness areas, religious pilgrimages, great cities, and iconic rivers. Walk to learn more about our beautiful and curious world, to be healthy and happy, to add adventure and authenticity to life, and to learn something about yourself in the process. Walkin...

There are fifty-five National Heritage Areas scattered across the US and they continue to grow in number and diversity. Though they’re not officially national parks, their conservation, education, and recreation related objectives echo those of the national parks: to conserve nationally significant natural and cultural landscapes and to make them available to the public for purposes of education, recreation, and sustainable tourism-related economic development. But the methods of achieving...