These American Lands

by Dyan Zaslowsky

This collaborative volume is part history and part aggressive advocacy on behalf of conservation of America's federal lands. The history is legislative and administrative, covering a series of congressional acts and the federal managers who tried to administer them. There are separate chapters on the work history and conflicts among such agencies as the National Park Service, the Forest Service, and the Bureau of Land Management. Then, at the end of each chapter, the authors spell out how federal land policy should be changed to assure sound preservation and conservation. The suggestions are judicious and sensible, and the case that such conservation is in our national interest is convincing. A helpful appendix to federal land laws and statistics concludes the work.