Description: "Wallace Stegner called the national park system one of the United States' best ideas. That good idea has led to an institution that has grown over the past one hundred years, and the park system now encompasses four hundred areas that host over three hundred million visitors in typical year. Jonathan Jarvis (as a ranger, biologist, and director of the National Park Service in the Obama administration) and Destry Jarvis (as an advocate, policy analyst, and lobbyist) have worked to better the parks for over forty years. They offer here a history of the National Park Service (NPS) and an argument for the NPS to become an independent agency--similar to the Smithsonian Institution and separated from the Department of the Interior. Their reasoning relates to politics, finances, and science, and their proposal aims to safeguard the future of our national parks"--
Brief description: Jonathan B. Jarvis was the eighteenth director of the National Park Service, serving from 2009 to 2017. He served for forty years with the NPS as ranger, biologist, and park superintendent in eight national parks.
Review Quotes: "An earnest plea to move the National Park Service out of the highly politicized Department of the Interior and make it an independent agency."-- "Kirkus Reviews"