The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America's National Parks [Paperback]

Longlisted for an Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence
AWashington PostNotable Book of the Year

Americas national parks are breathing spaces in a world in which such spaces are steadily disappearing, which is why more than 300 million people visit the parks each year. Now Terry Tempest Williams, theNew York Timesbestselling author of the environmental classicRefugeand the beloved memoirWhen Women Were Birds, returns withThe Hour of Land, a literary celebration of our national parks and an exploration of what they mean to us and what we mean to them.

From the Grand Tetons in Wyoming to Acadia in Maine to Big Bend in Texas, Williams creates a series of lyrical portraits that illuminate the unique grandeur of each place while delving into what it means to shape a landscape with its own evolutionary history into something of our own making. Part memoir, part natural history, and part social critique,The Hour of Landis a meditation and a manifesto on why wild lands matter to the soul of America.

MAPPING THE TERRITORY

1. AMERICAS NATIONAL PARKS:By definition

2. GRAND TETON NATIONAL PARK, WYOMING:Keep promise

3. THEODORE ROOSEVELT NATIONAL PARK, NORTH DAKOTA:All this is what the wind knows

4. ACADIA NATIONAL PARK, MAINE:the stones, the steel, the galaxies

5. GETTYSBURG NATIONAL MILITARY PARK, PENNSYLVANIA:there is no prevailing

6. EFFIGY MOUNDS NATIONAL MONUMENT, IOWA:Death yes but as a gathering

7. BIG BEND NATIONAL PARK, TEXAS:Any wind will tell³J