Your Winter Reading List for Exploring Parks and U.S. History

“The Encyclopedia of Useless Things”

by Gretel Enck (2023)

Author Gretel Enck is a National Park Service ranger who was instrumental in NPCA’s recent and successful campaign to designate Blackwell School National Historic Site in Marfa, Texas. Her debut work is part ghost story, part coming of age novel, and a deeply felt love note to the people, folkways and topography of the state’s western region.

Set in Little Pine, this book tells the story of 11-year-old Veronica Curtiss and her best friends Rita and Johanna. The trio are compelled to resolve the mysterious disappearance of Rita’s younger brother.

The plot includes a pair of talking ravens and the lingering presence of Los Descarriados, a band of burro-riding ghosts who are having some difficulty managing their transition into the afterlife. When the trio learn that the younger brother, Ramon, has been abducted, they craft a rescue plan that places them at odds with many of the people, living and dead, in Little Pine. Still, with a flying suit crafted from plans left behind by her late father, some pluck and a lot of help from her friends, Veronica leads the effort to save Ramon and help the earthbound ghosts find peace by transforming to their final resting places.

“Teddy and Booker T.: How Two American Icons Blazed a Path for Racial Equality”

by Brian Kilmeade (2023)

Fox News anchor Brian Kilmeade’s book doesn’t explore much new biographical ground regarding its two central figures. It does, however, remind readers that decades before Franklin D. Roosevelt established his own “Black Cabinet” of prominent African Americans in the 1930s to advise him on matters of race, his cousin Theodore, as the 26th president, had reached out to one man to provide similar service.

In 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to dine with him at the White House. It was the first and last time an African American received such an invite from the president. Kilmeade explores the political and social relationship between the two leaders that extended well beyond that dinner.

Kilmeade emphasizes that courage, vision and the striving for self-improvement made Washington and Roosevelt, and by extension the nation, great. Yet, the author places that greatness within the context of middle 19th and early 20th century U.S. history and addresses the adverse impacts of racial prejudice and white supremacy on both men.

Learn more about Washington at the Booker T. Washington National Monument in Virginia.

“Olmsted and Yosemite: Civil War, Abolition, and the National Park Idea”

by Rolf Diamant & Ethan Carr (2022)

On June 30, 1864, President Abraham Lincoln signed into law the Yosemite Land Grant. The groundbreaking piece of conservation legislation transferred Yosemite Valley to the state of California so that the land could “be held for public use, resort, and recreation.”

Tragically, the law predicated the protection of Yosemite Valley on the forced removal of the Southern Sierra Miwok in the 1850s from their ancestral homeland. Lincoln also signed the law during one of the bloodiest periods of the Civil War. Authors Rolf Diamant and Ethan Carr explore this history and the links among the fight to preserve the union, end slavery and expand the commitment of the federal government to establish public lands for some of the people at the expense of others.

At the heart of their narrative is Frederick Law Olmsted, whose 1865 Yosemite report helped to launch the concept of national parks in the minds of the public and elected officials. The report remains one of the most significant documents in the history of land conservation. Learn more about this landscape architect at the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site in Massachusetts.

“A Few Days of Trouble: Revelations on the Journey to Justice for My Cousin and Best Friend, Emmett Till”

by Rev. Wheeler Parker and Christopher Benson (2023)

The fateful morning that Emmett Louis Till was kidnapped at gunpoint from his Uncle Mose Wright’s home, his cousin, Wheeler Parker, witnessed the event. Parker was, in fact, one of the last people to see Till alive. This book details Parker’s recollections of Till’s kidnapping and lynching, the trauma he and his family suffered in the wake of Till’s murder, and the slow, frustrating march he helped lead over more than 60 years toward justice, healing and the accurate commemoration of his cousin’s legacy.

Parker lays everything out for the reader — from his intractable sense of survivor’s guilt to his efforts to coordinate the prosecution of Till’s killers with Mississippi state officials, members of Congress and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. For decades, every opportunity he found to advance justice for Till ultimately proved inviable. Then, in 2022, Congress passed the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Law, followed a year later by President Biden’s use of the Antiquities Act to establish the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument. Both the law and the park would bring an element of closure to the Till story and, in the process, take Parker from that small house in Money, Mississippi, to the White House in Washington, D.C.

“In the Hurricane’s Eye: The Genius of George Washington and the Victory at Yorktown”

by Nathaniel Philbrick (2018)

In this book, historian Nathaniel Philbrick traces the economic, political, diplomatic and military maneuverings that led combined American and French troops to final victory in the American Revolution at Yorktown in 1781. But, as Philbrick makes clear, the war for American independence was part of a larger power struggle between British, French and Spanish forces, all battling for military success.

If Gen. George Washington was the military architect of American independence, Philbrick’s book makes it clear that Franciso Saavedra of Spain was its unheralded fixer and financier.

Washington’s land-based forces depended on the ability of French naval forces to drive off the Royal Navy. But in summer 1781, the French fleet lacked the currency to sustain itself for future operations in the Caribbean and in the waters off the coast of North America. No funds, no fighting.

Enter Francisco Saavedra — a doctor, former soldier and official of the Spanish government who Philbrick describes as a “consummate fixer.” In August 1781, Saavedra traveled to Havana where, in just a few hours, he collected 500,000 pesos from local merchants and wealthy landowners — enough money to fund the naval forces of Spain’s ally long enough to defeat the British and make it possible for Washington to bag the besieged army of General Cornwallis that October.

Learn more about this period of history at Yorktown Battlefield Part of Colonial National Historical Park in Virginia.

“George Melendez Wright: The Fight for Wildlife and Wilderness in the National Parks”

by Jerry Emory (2023)

George Melendez Wright, one of the most influential people ever to work for the National Park Service, almost lost his job just one year after joining the agency in 1927. A “regional bureaucrat” reviewing Wright’s file was distressed to learn that the ranger-naturalist was only 5 feet, 4 inches tall. Believing Wright to be too short for the job, the man recommended his dismissal.

Fortunately, the Park Service ignored that advice. Wright went on to spend eight intense years helping national parks to evolve the way they approached wildlife management and cultural resource preservation.

In the 1920s and 30s, wildlife management policies in national parks allowed for, and even encouraged, the feeding of bears and the extirpation of predators to “save” the species they hunted. Wright brought scientific analysis to national park conservation, and his “gregarious and persuasive” energy won him allies and admirers who implemented his recommendations, at long last bringing rigor and science to park management. Wright was the first Hispanic employee to hold a professional position with the Park Service, and Jerry Emory’s book details his background, training and impact, providing the reader with insights into the life of one of least known heroes in the era of modern conservation.

“South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon Line to Understand the Soul of a Nation”

by Imani Perry (2022)

Author Imani Perry’s book helps to fashion a better understanding of the American South, which is often perceived by those above the Mason-Dixon Line as prompting many of the country’s troubles — racism, white supremacy and anti-intellectual bias — rather than forming a significant part of the country’s soul.

Her perspective as an African American woman born and raised in Alabama, who reconstructs her view of her homeland after much time spent outside the region, generates insights and observations that are both quotidian and extraordinary.

The South is slavery, football, Jim Crow, Whole Foods and the Klan, she writes. It is a place where some of the most honest and penetrating conversations about race, remembrance and healing were taking place a decade or more before the murder of George Floyd spun the country into a spasm of racial reckoning. The region commemorates Black achievement and, in some states, Confederate history month. Perry’s book invites us to reexamine the South through her eyes and proves that given the region’s tangled history and culture, one is likely to find its people living in 2024, 1850, 1965 and 1600 (for better and for worse) all at the same time.

Learn more about the state’s history at Alabama’s nine national park sites.

“We Had a Little Real Estate Problem: The Unheralded Story of Native Americans and Comedy”

by Kliph Nesteroff (2022)

Oneida standup comedian Charlie Hill once informed his audience that the Declaration of Independence contained three references to “Indian savages.” In an early nod to political correctness, Hill concluded, “You’d at least think they would change it to Native American savages.”

Hill was one of the first Native Americans to gain fame doing standup comedy. In the 1970s he appeared on television’s “The Richard Pryor Show” and “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.” He later wrote for “Roseanne.”

Kliph Nesteroff’s book explores the impact Hill had on future generations of Native comics. Elaine Miles, who made her acting debut on the television show “Northern Exposure” and began a standup-comedy career after comedian George Lopez encouraged her, cited Hill as an inspiration. The 1491s, featuring Dallas Goldtooth, followed in Hill’s footsteps, creating sketches that pilloried both Native and non-Native conventions (dial up their Indian Store sketch on YouTube).

Nesteroff notes that as of the book’s publication, 25% of First Nations reserves in Canada do not have potable water and that 40% of the Navajo Nation lives without drinking water after contamination of their water sources by extractive industries. That’s nothing to laugh at. Still, this book demonstrates the role that humor can play in empowering people to survive and so beautifully persevere.

Learn more on NPCA’s “National Parks are Native Lands” webpage.

“Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands”

by Kelly Lytle Hernandez (2022)

Our generally ahistorical view of Mexico has allowed too many of us to overlook or deliberately neglect that nation’s rich history. What we’ve missed, in part, is the ongoing fight the people of Mexico have waged for justice, good government and the reining in of the unchecked power of foreign interests.

“Bad Mexicans” tells the story of the magonistas, a group of journalists, workers and dissidents who challenged the regime of Porfirio Diaz, who served three terms as president. His last term ran from 1884 to 1911. Many regarded him as a dictator who, for a price, offered his country’s resources to American businessmen at the expense of the well-being of his own people.

Journalist Enrique Flores Magon opposed Diaz by embarrassing him through editorials about the president’s corruption. Assassination attempts followed, and Magon fled to the United States where he continued to publish his newspaper, Regeneracion.

Several presidential administrations, starting with national parks champion Theodore Roosevelt in 1908, committed to wiping out magonista resistance and devoted significant resources through the departments of State, Treasury and War to protect Diaz from the “bad Mexicans” opposing his regime. As author Kelly Lytle Hernandez explains, a combination of Diaz’ political scheming and the work of the magonistas helped bring about the Mexican Revolution and shape modern Mexican politics.

Looking for more suggestions?

Check out these additional 10 nonfiction books that can deepen your appreciation for pivotal events in American history and the national park sites that commemorate them.