Book Review

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Book Review | The Journal of American History, 86.1 | The History Cooperative

Perserving Nature in the National Parks: A History. By Richard West Sellars. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997. xiv, 380 pp. $35.00, isbn 0-300-06931-6.)

Richard West Sellars has written the best history of the National Park Service (NPS) now available. His focus is on how the service interpreted and discharged its duty to preserve unimpaired the natural resources or "scientific exhibits" that were the focus of each of its units after the Organic Act of 1916 mandated the establishment of a professional managerial service. He cannot write of natural resource management, and especially of wildlife management, without closely examining what employees of the Park Service actually did, in the field and in Washington. 1

This book is remarkable for existing at all. Dr. Sellars's findings are critical of the National Park Service's stewardship of the nation's many (now 378) park units. Yet Sellars is a professional historian employed by the National Park Service. That the NPS leadership proposed such a study, that highly placed professionals in the service defended it when its likely critical conclusions became increasingly clear, that Sellars is honored within the service for the depth of his research as well as for his conclusions—all are testimony to the increasingly self-critical and mature nature of this elite government agency. . . .

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