Discover how America's abandoned passenger trains hold the key to preserving our nation's scenic treasures and wilderness landscapes.In this timely and provocative work, renowned environmental historian Alfred Runte challenges our blind embrace of highways and airports, revealing how the decline of passenger rail has scarred America's legendary landscapes. From national parks to urban corridors, Runte demonstrates how modern transportation choices are destroying th...

How should a national park be managed? Among all of the debates affecting America’s national parks, none has proved more enduring. Nor has any park, Alfred Runte reminds us, been in the spotlight more than Yosemite. Its cast of characters is especially rich, including James Mason Hutchings, Galen Clark, Frederick Law Olmsted, John Muir, David Brower, Joseph Grinnell, George M. Wright, and Ansel Adams. Not only was Yosemite the centerpiece of their careers, it was also the wellspring of the...

Revised with a new epilogue, “We the People,” this fifth edition of National Parks: TheAmerican Experience continues 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. Further supported with period photographs and now twel...

A thoroughly revised and expanded successor to Alfred Runte’s Trains of Discovery: Western Railroads and the National Parks, the new edition now includes protected landscapes and historical sites east of the Mississippi made possible or influenced by railroads: the Hudson River Valley; Delaware Water Gap; Harpers Ferry; Indiana Dunes; Gettysburg; Steamtown; and Shenandoah, Great Smoky Mountains, and Acadia National Parks. Illustrated with paintings, posters, photographs, and artifacts from...

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.

25 Myths That Are Destroying the Environment explores the many myths circulating in ecological and political discussions. These myths often drive policy, and Botkin is here to set the record straight. What may seem like an environmentally conscious action may very well be bringing about the unnatural destruction of habitats and ecosystems.