The best books about the Grand Canyon

In 1928, Bessie Hyde, a newlywed with her husband Glen, hoped to become the first woman to follow the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. But they never made it.

Searchers found the couple's homemade boat near the river's dangerous rapids. Did Bessie and Glen drown, or did they climb the steep canyon walls? Sunk Without a Sound has kept the Hydes' story alive in the hopes that one day their remains will be found and identified. Finding the missing and identifying the unknown have become passions of mine. 

Nathaniel Farrell Brodie’s Steel on Stone takes readers into Grand Canyon National Park. Here, Brodie worked on trails for eight seasons during brutal summer heat and cold winters. Brodie explores not just the national park in its beauty and danger but also the park’s history, tales from the park, and other adventures. In the end, Steel on Stone beautifully ruminates on home and on Brodie’s love of this landscape.

Amory wrote this wildly entertaining read of his rescue of a stray he found sick and starving in a NYC alley on a snowy Christmas Eve in 1977. He named the white cat Polar Bear, a moody curmudgeon with one blue and one gold eye, who became his lifelong companion. The book spent 12 weeks at #1 on The New York Times bestseller list and sold over 10 million copies. Amory was a fierce and famous activist who helped Captain Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society buy a boat to use in his fight against whaling and seal-hunting. In 1980 Amory founded the Black Beauty Ranch in Texas, a refuge for discarded and neglected animals, from cats, dogs, deer, horses to elephants, monkeys, and big cats. That same year, he spent over $500,000 to trap 582 burros and helicopter them out of the Grand Canyon to save these… show more.

This is absolutely the best “wow” book to take an illustrated journey from the bottom to the top of the Grand Canyon carved out over a billion years by erosive running water. The carefully researched illustrations go back and forth in time, as each new level of rock formation reveals past and present climates and habitats. Clues are provided by preserved traces of ancient life such as fossil skeletons, footprints, plants, teeth, and shells. The author/illustrator was “bit by the geology bug” and you will too after following a father and daughter on this hike of discovery.  

After I backpacked the Inner Canyon and Tonto Trail for 10 days in Grand Canyon, I longed for a book like this: one that would wrap the massive creation of the Grand Canyon into a compelling story and explore the depth of human connection. Fedarko adeptly weaves in history, geology, environmental concerns, wildlife, flora, Indigenous culture, and climate around a thrilling dory adventure on the Colorado River—so much so that you feel you really know the park. To pair reading it with hiking or boating into the inner canyon yields an immersive experience where you can see, touch, and breathe much of what he describes. This book is always my first recommendation for anyone headed to Grand Canyon, and I’ll re-read it again during my next Grand Canyon visit.

This one’s a little bit of a cheat because the Grand Canyon isn’t technically a mountainous landscape—unless you’re looking at it from the bottom. But as far as landscapes go, you can’t do much better. The Anomaly follows an I’ll-do-it-myself archaeologist who discovers an ancient cave that seems to have a mind of its own. More than anything, this book is just downright freakin’ fun. It’s evident that Rutger knows this landscape better than most, and he utilizes both history and conspiracy theories to his advantage. This one’s a true mystery where the setting is a character in itself.

Probably a lesser-known book, Brighty still packs a powerful emotional punch. Similar to Pax, the book speaks movingly about the power of the wild and the value of allowing animals to exist on their terms. In addition to this less, Brighty also tells of the moving bond between a spitfire donkey and a pair of old men working the Grand Canyon. Although he loses his companion, a prospector named Old Timer, early in the book, Brighty never forgets the man’s kindness. He spends the rest of the book, loyal to another man, Jim, seeking justice for Old Timer’s murder. Throughout the book, Brighty never loses the wild inside him and Marguerite Henry does a masterful job of weaving together the themes of loyalty, purpose, and respect for Brighty’s personal integrity. Although mostly considered a children’s book, Brighty is well-worth the read for any adult looking for a story to… show more.

I guarantee this amazing history of Butchart will leave you in awe, especially if you have explored a bit of the Grand Canyon as I have or have dreamed of doing so.

Butchart tackled an astonishing number of remote and extreme formations in this remarkable place. Very well-written and meticulously researched.

Andy Lankford reveals the kind of secrets the NPS probably doesn’t want you to know in Ranger Confidential. She worked twelve years as a ranger, and she takes readers behind the scenes at Yosemite, Grand Canyon, and Denali. Did you know law enforcement park rangers are 12 times more likely to die on the job than an FBI agent? And that they’re assaulted more than any other federal officers? I didn’t either until I read this captivating book. I also learned that NPS rangers do everything we do at Baxter State Park—rescues, forest firefighting, enforcement, loon identification—just on a larger scale. Already a great work, Ranger Confidential will age into a classic, perhaps the be-all, end-all opus of ranger life. 

Indigenous communities and land dispossession are the subjects of Crimes Against Nature, although Jacoby also brings white transgressors of federal policy into his book about the dark history of the American conservation movement. The rural communities he describes engaged in survival practices that quickly became defined and punished as crimes: hunting, fishing, tree-cutting, and foraging. Jacoby includes eastern parks in his assessment, writing about the Adirondacks before turning to Yellowstone and Grand Canyon. At the heart of this beautifully written book is the tension between what constitutes private and public space in American history, and how rural white and Indigenous Americans have often lived in the borderlands between them.