Public Lands

America’s public lands include more than 600 million acres of forests, plains, mountains, wetlands, deserts, and shorelines. In this book, John Leshy, a leading expert in public lands policy, discusses the key political decisions that led to this, beginning at the very founding of the nation. He traces the emergence of a bipartisan political consensus in favor of the national government holding these vast land areas primarily for recreation, education, and conservation of biodiversity and cultural resources.

Debates continue to rage over the merits or flaws of public land and whether or not it should be privatized - or at least, radically reconfigured in some way. In Defense of Public Lands offers a comprehensive refutation of the market-oriented arguments. Steven Davis passionately advocates that public land ought to remain firmly in the public’s hands. He reviews empirical data and theoretical arguments from biological, economic, and political perspectives in order to build a case for why our public lands are an invaluable and irreplaceable asset for the American people.

Since its inception, however, America’s public land system has been embroiled in controversy - caught in the push and pull between the desire to develop the valuable resources the land holds or conserve them. Alarmed by rising tensions over the use of these lands, hunter, angler, and outdoor enthusiast Mark Kenyon set out to explore the spaces involved in this heated debate, and learn firsthand how they came to be and what their future might hold.

At stake in 1896 was the new idea that some landscapes should be collectively, permanently owned by a democratic government. Although many people today think of public lands as an American birthright, their very existence was then in doubt and dependent on a merger of the talents of these two men. Natural Rivals examines a time of environmental threat and political dysfunction not unlike our own and reveals the complex dynamic that gave birth to America’s rich public lands legacy.

A hard-hitting look at the battle now raging over the fate of the public lands in the American West--and a plea for the protection of these last wild places The public lands of the western United States comprise some 450 million acres of grassland, steppe land, canyons, forests, and mountains...

At 28, Stephanie Land's dreams of attending a university and becoming a writer quickly dissolved when a summer fling turned into an unplanned pregnancy. Before long, she found herself a single mother, scraping by as a housekeeper to make ends meet. Maid is an emotionally raw, masterful account of Stephanie's years spent in service to upper-middle-class America as a "nameless ghost" who quietly shared in her clients' triumphs, tragedies, and deepest secrets.

American Zion is the story of the Bundy family, famous for their armed conflicts in the West. With an antagonism that goes back to the very first Mormons who fled the Midwest for the Great Basin, they hold a sense of entitlement that confronts both law and democracy. Today their cowboy confrontations threaten public lands, wild species, and American heritage.

For the adventurers, campers, explorers, map readers, road trippers, nature enthusiasts, and public lands lovers out there, The Enduring Wild is an indispensable invitation to know these places more deeply and to embrace our common inheritance.

Florida has long beckoned retirees seeking to spend their golden years in the sun, but, for many, the American dream of owning a home there was financially impossible. That changed in the 1950s, when the so-called "installment land sales industry" appeared out of nowhere to hawk billions of dollars of Florida residential property, sight unseen, to retiring northerners. For only $10 down and $10 a month, working-class pensioners could buy a piece of the Florida dream: a graded homesite that would be waiting for them in a planned community when they were ready to build.

The definitive story of the California redwoods, their discovery and their exploitation, as told by an activist who fought to protect their existence against those determined to cut them down. Every year millions of tourists from around the world visit California’s famous redwoods. Yet few who...

Longtime fly fisherman Quinn Grover had contemplated the “why” of his fishing identity before, more recently, becoming focused on the “how” of it. He realized he was a dedicated fly fisherman, in large part, because public lands and public waterways in the West made it possible. In Wilderness of Hope Grover recounts his fly-fishing experiences with a strong evocation of place, connecting those experiences to the ongoing national debate over public lands.

“An inspiring reminder of the incredible resource that is our public lands.” —Brendan Leonard, author of The Camping Life and Surviving the Great Outdoors Across 193 million acres of forests, mountains, deserts, watersheds, and grasslands, national forests provide a multitude of uses as...

Dive into the pulse of modern cities with "Building Prosperity," a riveting eBook that unravels the complexities of urban growth and housing affordability. This cutting-edge read offers an essential deep dive into the factors shaping the future of our cities and provides insightful analysis on how to forge a path towards sustainable and inclusive urban development. Imagine a world where urban growth equates to widespread prosperity—a vision this book explores with meticulous detail. Each chapter weaves through the intricacies of urban economics, the historical contexts of housing crises, ...

Learn about the history of public parks, America's National Parks and America's Public Lands. The book includes a complete listing of the United States' National Parks as well as a complete list of each state's park system.

Today, we are at a turning point as we face ecological and political crises that are rooted in conflicts over the land itself. But these problems can be solved if we draw on elements of our tradition that move us toward a new commonwealth - a community founded on the well-being of all people and the natural world.

One woman's enlightening trek through the natural histories, cultural stories, and present perils of thirteen national monuments.

With the decline of traditional journalism, there are precious few inquiring eyes watching government and the public service. How can any of us know how our tax dollars are being spent? But there is good news. For at least the past decade, governments at all levels have been busy publishing truckloads of data representing official policies and their outcomes. For the most part, that data is available in the public domain and just sits there, waiting for us to come and get it. This book was written with the hope and expectation that sophisticated data analytics tools can tame those ...

‘Soothe your Wrath’ is a compilation of poetry, mostly centered around the enigmatic ‘Raindrop’. Travels ranging from Whistler, BC and busting through the vast deserts of the Southwest of the US of A, terminate at the rocky shoreline of Maine’s coast. The Raindrop cedes it’s hold beyond matters of liquidation, and the body of work transitions to topics of serendipity or extracts of prose from the Warlock portfolio. Although Twitter/X’s Grok provides some analysis, the author invites you, and you alone, to ponder a bit on each verse and make your own conclusions. What it means ...

One hundred fifty years ago, the McCoy brothers of Springfield, Illinois, bet their fortunes on Abilene, Kansas, then just a slapdash way station. Instead of an endless horizon of prairie grasses, they saw a bustling outlet for hundreds of thousands of Texas longhorns coming up the Chisholm Trail. The Chisholm Trail follows the McCoys' vision and the effects of the Chisholm Trail from post-Civil War Texas and Kansas to the multimillion-dollar beef industry that remade the Great Plains, the American diet, and the national and international beef trade.

These words, pounded out on a laptop at Cliven Bundy’s besieged Nevada ranch on April 6, 2014, ignited a new American revolution. Across the country, a certain type of citizen snapped to attention: This was the flashpoint the they’d been waiting for, a chance to help a fellow American stand up to a tyrannical and corrupt federal government. Up in Arms chronicles how an isolated clan of desert-dwelling Mormons became the guiding light - and then the outright leaders - of America’s Patriot movement.