The Hour of Land

April 25, 2016
Williams (When Women Were Birds), a longtime environmental activist, adds a meditative element to memoir as she shares her abiding love for America’s open spaces. She grew up in Utah, home to five national parks and seven national monuments, and writes of places such as the Grand Tetons in Wyoming, Big Bend National Park in Texas, and Glacier National Park in Montana. Some parks are new to Williams, and others are deeply familiar: Williams’s great-grandfather introduced Grand Teton National Park to his son, who introduced it to his sons, who in turn introduced it to her. Chapters on Big Bend and the Gulf Coast give Williams opportunities to address political and environmental issues, particularly calls for a wall to separate the U.S. from Mexico. “The 118-mile border that Big Bend National Park shares with Mexico would be closed not only to humans,” but to the “movement and migration” of an array of species that “have no understanding of man-made borders,” she writes. Similarly, her discussion of the Gulf Islands National Seashore centers on BP and the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. In passionate and insightful prose, Williams celebrates the beauty of the American landscape while reinforcing the necessity of responsible stewardship. Illus. Agency: Brandt & Hochman Literary.

April 1, 2016
In commemoration of the centennial of the National Park Service, Williams (When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice, 2012, etc.) explores 12 diverse parks. There are few contemporary nonfiction writers who can capture the essence of the American wilderness landscape as eloquently and intimately as Williams. Noted for writing about the American West, her distinctive prose style is capable of conveying a deep spiritual dimension within the physical setting. This is very much in evidence in her latest book, a broadly ambitious and deeply impassioned collection of essays on a select group of settings within the national park system. Her writing expands beyond recreational parks to include battlefields, monuments, and seashores. Williams reflects on personal ties to locations such as Grand Teton and stretches across the country to Arcadia National Park, where she discovers familial roots going back several generations. Other locations, such as Big Bend National Park and Alcatraz Island, offer first-time encounters. Williams provides well-documented histories of many of these parks, yet a more consistent thread running throughout the book touches on the rapid changes incurred in recent decades, primarily related to the destructive effects of climate change or by the interference and conflicting interests of the federal government and the oil industry. The author heartbreakingly examines the Gulf Islands National Seashore and the mass devastation caused by the 2010 BP oil spill. Williams' message for preserving and respecting these sights is heartfelt, but she has a tendency to occasionally overstate her message, and her calls to action sometimes veer toward rants. Her writing is most powerful and convincing when she allows her subtle and often sublime reflections to shine forth: "No matter how much we try to manage and manipulate, orchestrate, or regulate our national parks, they will remain as the edge-scapes they are existing on the boundaries between culture and wildness--improvisational spaces immune to the scripts of anyone." An important, well-informed, and moving read for anyone interested in learning more about America's national parks.

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Starred review from April 1, 2016
Williams (When Women Were Birds, 2012), an ardent, often rhapsodic, always scrupulous witness to the living world and advocate for the protection of public lands, celebrates the centennial of the National Park Service in this enrapturing and encompassing chronicle of her deeply inquisitive, meditative, and dramatic sojourns in a dozen national parks. Guided by a finely calibrated moral compass and acute attunement to the spirit of the land, Williams approaches these protected places with curiosity about the past and concern for the future, matching ravishing and knowledgeable descriptions of land and wildlife with personal stories, swaths of history and reportage, profiles of remarkable individuals dedicated to preserving the wild, and evocative commentary. She begins with the Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, which she and her family have hiked for decades. Family lore brackets Williams' stirring account of the vision and generosity of John D. Rockefeller Jr., who, steered by Horace Albright, the second director of the National Park Service, quietly bought up land in order to donate it to the federal government so that the original park would be extended to include the entire Snake River Valley. This grand philanthropic act ignited a political firestorm and an epic fight in Congress, though it is now appreciated as a magnificent gift to all humankind, an evolution in perception to keep in mind as we face our own environmental battles.Not all her adventures are so affirming. North Dakota's Theodore Roosevelt National Park is under siege as the natural-gas boom encroaches on its borders with clanking rigs, pollution, scraped land, trucks in traffic, dust. In all, 42 national parks are threatened by oil and gas development. This dire predicament inspires Williams to ponder the ongoing conflict between protection and use of public lands. What she finds on her trip to Gulf Islands National Seashore, one of eight national parks damaged by the BP oil disaster in 2010, is even more distressing. Her time in Big Bend National Park on the Rio Grande along the border between Texas and Mexico engenders penetrating musings about need, fear, and drought. As for the wall politicians tout, Williams testifies to the grievous harm such an edifice would inflict on wildlife as well as people. Questions of justice and sacredness arise in her dispatch from Effigy Mounds National Monument in Iowa, while her probing explorations of the Gettysburg National Military Park summon thoughts about the unending echoes of the Civil War.Illustrated with exquisite photographs by such masters as Lois Conner, Lee Friedlander, Sally Mann, and Sebastiao Salgado, this is a uniquely evocative, illuminating, profound, poignant, beautiful, courageous, and clarion book about the true significance of our national parks. These sanctuaries, Williams muses, are not only about preservation and recreation, but also about education and remembrance. She envisions them as places of recognition, vital centers of awe and unity, inspiration and transformation. Williams writes, If we can learn to listen to the land, we can learn to listen to each other. And the time is now: We have arrived at the Hour of Land. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

April 15, 2016

Williams (When Women Were Birds) presents a "personal topography," a combination travel memoir and historical study of 12 U.S. national parks. Each location presents its own challenges and controversies. The author tells of John D. Rockefeller Jr. secretly buying up land in and around Jackson Hole, with the intent of donating it toward the establishment of Grand Teton National Park. She remarks on watching American and Mexican children skipping stones back and forth across the Rio Grande in Big Bend National Park and discusses the difficult, diplomatic job of the superintendent of Teddy Roosevelt National Park, in negotiating attempts by oil companies to drill on park land. She describes her discomfort at meeting a Gettysburg National Battlefield tour guide who presents the area's history with a decided Confederate bias, and a powerful visit to Alcatraz Island to see an art exhibit by imprisoned Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei. Throughout, the author emphasizes the importance of maintaining our national public green spaces and the struggle against political and environmental forces that are threatening their survival. VERDICT Of interest to travelers, historians, environmentalists, and anyone concerned about the past, present, and future of this country's protected landscapes.--Rachel Owens, Daytona State Coll. Lib., FL

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2016

Noted conservationist/activist Williams honors the centennial of the National Park Service with a memoir/commentary blend featuring 12 parks ranging from Yellowstone in Wyoming to Acadia in Maine. With 22 black-and-white images from photographers like Sally Mann and Sebastiao Salgado.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.