Empire of Shadows

December 12, 2011
Black (The Trout Pool Paradox) takes the reader on a momentous and bloody ride through the terrain of the unconquered West. Black warns readers against “presentism”—“the danger of relying on contemporary values to pass moral judgments on people of a different time.” Divided into five sections and beginning with the familiar expedition of Lewis and Clark, the book spans nearly the entire 19th century. Lewis and Clark were “uninvited guests in an unknown land, and any tribe they encountered were assumed hostile until proven otherwise,” while the Indians were “driven by fear or superstition to avoid the upper Yellowstone.” Of course, the dangerous myth surrounding Yellowstone accelerated the explorers’ desire to conquer it. As the book continues, the government enters with paleontologists, entomologists, botanists, and mineralogists, among others. Black’s clear and concise prose offers some humorous moments; names from a Montana population record include Whiskey Bill, Bummer Dan, Old Phil the Man Eater, and Geo. Hillerman, “The Great American Pie-Biter.” Though his book is highly readable, Black must remind the reader of all the players using a dramatis personae that is almost as daunting as the wild landscape itself. Agent: Henry Dunow, Dunow, Lehrer and Carlson Agency.

December 15, 2011
The story of a national park might seem a niche subject, but OnEarth magazine editor Black (Casting a Spell: The Bamboo Fly Rod and the American Pursuit of Perfection, 2006, etc.) surrounds it with a colorful, stormy, often-distressing history of our northern mountain states. The author begins with Lewis and Clark, whose 1804–06 expedition passed nearby but brought back only rumors of odd geological events. The northern Rockies remained a backwater for another half-century. Almost no one but fur traders took an interest for the first 30 years; wagon trains pouring west after 1840 passed well to the south. By the 1850s gold mining and ranching produced settlers, quickly followed by the Army, both anxious to eliminate the Indians. Black provides painful details of 20 years of conflict that accomplished this goal. Lacking gold or good grazing, the Yellowstone area attracted few settlers, but visitors brought back tales of wondrous geysers, boiling springs and breathtaking scenery. In 1869 the small, privately funded Cook-Folsom-Peterson Expedition produced such a tantalizing report that Montana residents organized a large expedition. That expedition spent a month exploring, resulting in a torrent of publicity that led to the federally funded Hayden Geological Survey of 1871. Its enthusiastic report included historical photographs by William Henry Jackson and paintings by Thomas Moran, and the resulting publicity persuaded Congress to create the world's first national park in 1872. Congress did not, however, provide money, so vandalism, poaching and commercial exploitation flourished until 1886 when the Army moved in. It did not leave until the new National Park Service took over in 1918. An admirable, warts-and-all history of a milestone in environmental preservation.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

January 1, 2012

This thoroughly researched and engaging account of the discovery and imaginative creation of Yellowstone National Park is told through the lives of the park's colorful and often tragically egotistic explorers and promoters. Black (editor, OnEarth magazine; The Trout Pool Paradox: The American Lives of Three Rivers) rewrites the foundational history of the world's first national park, building on recent works such as Paul Schullery and Lee Whittlesey's History and Myth in the Creation of Yellowstone National Park and Kim Allen Scott's Yellowstone Denied: The Life of Gustavus Cheyney Doane. Waging an irreverent battle against now traditional fakelore, Black particularly emphasizes Native American presence in the region of geysers, hot springs, and the headwaters of the Yellowstone River and the role of Lt. Gustavus Doane's military exploration, which opened the wonderland to international attention. VERDICT Highly recommended for academic and public libraries as an updated history of Yellowstone National Park that casts new light into the deepest shadows of the human side of the park's creation stories.--Nathan E. Bender, Albany Cty. P.L., Laramie, WY

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 15, 2012
Black (The Trout Pool Paradox, 2004) brings his entwined passions for history and nature to the tumultuous story of the late-nineteenth-century exploration of Yellowstone, a unique landscape so magnificent and dynamic its first white visitors called it Wonderland. Lured to Montana by the booming fur trade, white trappers depended on Native Americans as their teachers and role models, and many married Indian women, including the famous mountain man Jim Bridger, a key figure in the Yellowstone adventure. Soldiers, settlers, and vigilantes followed the trappers to Montana and instigated conflicts with Native Americans that resulted in horrific bloodshed. Within this ring of intensifying violence and havoc, determined explorers mounted chaotic yet successful expeditions and were so stunned by the land's vital grandeur that they made sure Yellowstone became America's first national park. Meticulous in his scholarship and analysis, captivating in his storytelling, and caustically witty in his provocative insights, Black delves deeply into the personalities of the Yellowstone seekers, including Nathaniel Langford, who became the park's first director; recklessly ambitious cavalryman Cheyney Doane; geologist Ferdinand Hayden; and Ivy League lawyer Cornelius Hedges. Black's suspenseful accounts of the explorers' dire ordeals and ecstatic discoveries are matched by arresting perspectives on the many-pronged conquest of the West, creating a profoundly engrossing and elucidating saga of tragedy and wonder.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)