This book lies halfway between (1) a history of the national parks as a whole and (2) a history and critique of National Park Service policy toward wildlife, ecosystems, and science. The first several chapters discuss the history of park system, which is characterized mostly by an absence of policy toward "nature" other than scenery. This half of the book is pretty conventional, and follows material available elsewhere. It is best seen as an update of other histories such as Runte's _National Parks: The American Experience_.
The second half of the book focuses more narrowly on (for lack of a better term) "nature policy." This half provides a valuable history from a critical standpoint, and it marks the book's central contribution.
Several themes reappear throughout the book. The first is the park service's disregard for scientific research. Sellars doesn't quite distinguish the two, but the NPS has little use for either the scientific method or scientific evidence. Briefly put, the NPS does not want to learn facts that conflict with current management policy. It also does not want to use a method that might give it answers that differ from the answers that it wants.
Other themes can be grouped together: wildlife, forests, and fire. The NPS seems to lack any understanding of how predators and prey interact, and how top-level processes (wolves and elk) can affect other processes (aspens and beavers). It also has a purely scenic view of forests, which leads to policies that spray insecticide on native beetles in the Rockies and Sierras. Fire policy has evolved toward a greater appreciation of how fire affects ecosystems, but here politics stands in the way of better management practices. Sellars provides an excellent discussion of these and similar issues throughout the book.
To understand the politics here, it would be helpful if Sellars spent more time looking outside the NPS to American society as a whole. What does the public want, and why? How has the growth of the environmental movement affected the park? How has Congress changed its management of the NPS? For example, the growth of earmarking in budget legislation has strengthened the pork-barrel elements of national park policy, ultimately leading to the embarrassment of Steamtown USA.
Like most histories of national parks, Sellars takes an elitist, wilderness-oriented perspective that is critical of tourism and economic development. I'm sympathetic to that perspective, but we should recognize it for what it is. Sellars doesn't reflect on his own values here - - if an overwhelming majority of the public in a democracy want national parks developed for recreational tourism, what right does a pro-wilderness minority have to disagree?
Those criticisms address more what Sellars doesn't do than what he does. I'll give it 5 stars for what he does, but it's really more of a 4.5.
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