Searching for Yellowstone: Ecology and Wonder in the Last Wilderness

This book presents itself as a history of Yellowstone. However, it's also an extended reflection on the park by someone who loves it dearly, someone who has worked for the National Park Service in Yellowstone for years and is very knowledgeable about the park. Schullery writes very well, and the book is a pleasure to read. The most striking characteristic of this book, in comparison with others, is how remarkably even-handed it is. Schullery takes controversial issues such as fire management, elk shooting, wolf reintroduction, and brucellosis-infected bison and presents them in an even-handed way, sympathetic to both sides. He recognizes that most people go to Yellowstone to see Old Faithful and the Grand Canyon, eat, and go shopping; that's not what he likes to do, but he isn't critical. Yet, somehow, he manages to cock an eyebrow here and there and make you rethink a position that you had previously held quite firmly. This would be a great book to read before a visit to Yellowstone, or as something to put in your pack while you're there. Highly recommended.

Combine history, scholarship, and a survey of nature and ecological issues and you have an uncommon history of Yellowstone that examines the political and cultural influences on the park's development and management over the decades. SEARCHING FOR YELLOWSTONE: ECOLOGY AND WONDER IN THE LAST WILDERNESS offers up chapters packed with true stories of environmental encounters and wonders. Readers with affection for Yellowstone will find these early encounters riveting. Diane C. Donovan California Bookwatch

`Highly recommended reading for anyone interested in knowing the "Yellowstone story" at a deeper level than the interpretive signs or tourist pamphlets. This would be excellent (and easy) "pre-reading" for anyone contemplating a first trip to Yellowstone....but it is also a fascinating and sometimes surprising eye-opener for someone (like me) who was somewhat familiar with Yellowstone already. From the perspective only a former Yellowstone employee and prolific writer/researcher could bring, Schullery persuasively argues-not unlike the "new western historians" in their iconoclastic reassessment of the American west and its history)-that Yellowstone is not so much a place as a process...a process of how we as Americans define a national park. Schullery's measured tour through this process provides a sobering reminder to inveterate tree-huggers like me that a national park is not a wilderness area, as much as I might like it to be in terms of "hands off" preservation. Schullery's approach is matter-of-fact, methodically researched (I actually enjoyed reading the copious "notes" section separately after having finished the book) and myth-busting at times (e.g. that surprisingly, the total number of developed acres in Yellowstone has actually decreased during the last 40 years rather than increased). He doesn't even spare himself, needling enthusiastic fly-fishers like himself with the sad-but-true fact that if we treated the ungulates of Yellowstone the same way fishermen do a Yellowstone trout (which was probably introduced in the first place rather than native), we would be cited for abusing the wildlife. A very readable and important book.

I read this book in a week and was quite impressed with the breadth of history covered in 260 something pages, not counting notes. I was glad to see that this historical account began with an "anthropological" perspective by recounting the known presence of Native American tribes prior to the EuroAmerican "discovery" of the place and the manner in which they were extricated from the ecosystem. I was also impressed with the historical information relating the misuse, management practices and policies that affected the life of the park once it was established and what changes have been implemented in recent years. The notes following the text were very helpful in leading me to other books and records that I would like to examine. A fine book that I purchased after reading the library copy!

This was a "can't put it down" book, unusual for a historical treatment which often, it seems to me, avoids cutting to the crux of a matter and rambles on and on. I particularly like the authors willingness to tangle horns with Chase on the elk controversy and the National Park Service on the Langford "birth of the national parks" campfire. I'm writing a book on the national parks with a little history and while I was delighted to see Chase lambasted I was shocked about the debunking of the campfire story. A history which came out about the same time as this book - Sellar's Preserving Nature in the National Parks - retains the story, and I had read Bartlett, and though it was years ago, also Haines, without zeroing in on the "myth assertion". I had to go back and attach a big caveat to the story, which I feel much better about now. It's a wonderful book; keep them coming (looks like the wolf story, after Casper, is going to be a story crying for a proper historian someday).