Alfred Runte

What did America lose with the decline of the passenger train? Much more than most Americans think, observes Alfred Runte, a leading historian of our national parks. Including parks and wilderness, the greatest loss has been to the American land. No technology was ever more respectful—protective—of what it means to have a national landscape. In song and story we call it America the Beautiful. And yet we let our best beautifiers disappear. Now the landscape suffers in our mindless rush to get rid of old technology and blindly embrace the new. Wind farms and solar power plants cajole us to redefine beauty itself, allowing access even to protected wilderness. No railroad ever asked for that—or wanted it. Beauty was after all the essence of travel. Americans sought—and railroads delivered—an intimate connection to open space. Recalling train travel experiences of his own, Runte invites us to interact as we travel, to slow down and renew our passion for the land as part of our journey and destination. As a true visionary with a deep respect for the land and its people, Runte asks us to open our eyes and our minds to the idea that we need not sacrifice beauty for progress. Originally published in 2006 as Allies of the Earth: Railroads and the Soul of Preservation, the book today is even more timely, now we see what policy-makers have in mind as replacements for railroads. Offering a new preface and epilogue, Runte stands his ground. Absent restraint, no technology is practicing conservation. Railroads renew the hope that the trains, i.e., the restraint, we so carelessly threw away may still be restored to preserve the remaining glories of our continent.

Completely revised for its fifth edition, National Parks: The American Experience tells the highly engaging story of how Americans invented and expanded the concept of national parks. A prominent adviser to the Ken Burns Emmy Award-winning documentary, "The National Parks: America's Best Idea," Alfred Runte is renowned as the nation's leading historian on the meaning and management of these treasured lands. Lavishly illustrated with period photographs, including eight pages of color paintings, National Parks: The American Experience has never been more beautiful or profound. This remains a stirring look into the lands that define America, from Yosemite and Yellowstone to wilderness Alaska. This is how we got our parks, and yes, how we have occasionally failed them, and when doing so how we have failed ourselves. "Civilization is the problem parks solve," Runte writes. At times, the national parks may seem as imperfect as they are exceptional; the point is that they are all we will ever have. Knowing that earlier America, and planning for the new America, still demands our humility to advance the best of both.

The Susquehana River is the longest river in the eastern United States, running 444 miles from its headwaters in the Appalachian Mountains of New York to its outlet in Chesapeake Bay. Its storied history includes the early native populations of Susquehannock and Iroquois peoples, the key roles it played in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, and environmental degradation brought on the by industrialization in the 19th century.

This history of the first large land area to be set aside for preservation and public use by Congress follows Yosemite from its early Native American inhabitants, exploration, establishment as a national park in 1890, and through such controversial developments as Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, the Badger Pass Ski Area, the so-called Firefall, and the infamous Stoneman Meadow riot of 1970. The story of Yosemite has proved to be a microcosm of the debate within the National Park Service itself over preservation versus access, development of resources versus conservation of them. “Yosemite,” Runte contends, “remains central to these and many other debates, suggesting its continuing importance as a field of investigation into the management of the national park system at large.”

This is a book about ecology, environment, nature, and the misleading information that plagues the discussions of these topics. It is easy-to-read, fun, and doesn't have to be read all at once; you can pick it up for five or ten minutes, get one idea out of it, put it down, and come back for other five or ten minutes some other time. It's light reading about very difficult subjects, such as: is trying to save every single species necessarily a good thing? Is life really all that fragile? Is undisturbed nature the normal state of things? and twenty-three more insightful essays.