| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Wild East: A Biography of the Great Smoky Mountains. By Margaret Lynn Brown. (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000. xxii, 457 pp. $49.95, ISBN 0-8130-1750-5.)

The Great Smokies: From Natural Habitat to National Park. By Daniel S. Pierce. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2000. xviii, 254 pp. Cloth, $40.00, ISBN 1-57233-076-7. Paper, $18.95, ISBN 1-57233-079-1.)

On September 2, 1940, Franklin D. Roosevelt officially dedicated the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Encompassing portions of the southern Appalachian Mountains in western North Carolina and east Tennessee, the park is noted for its mountain scenery, eclectic biodiversity, and rare patches of old-growth forest, and it is celebrated as the largest national park east of the Mississippi River. In contrast to the preeminent national parks in the West, which were set aside from largely undeveloped public lands, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park represents a small piece of pristine wilderness rescued from the heavily civilized East, according to park boosters. As such, the park marks a milestone in the history of wilderness preservation. As Margaret Lynn Brown and Daniel S. Pierce reveal, however, the creation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was far from a simple act of wilderness preservation; rather, it was a complex process of cultural invention. Building on the scholarship of Alfred Runte and William Cronon, both books explore the political, cultural, and environmental process that underlay the creation and development of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. And both Brown and Pierce conclude that ultimately the park is actually "a very human place." . . .

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