Trijntje's Reviews > The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America's National Parks

I'm really sad to give this book such a low rating: I wanted so much to like it. And, in fact, I liked the beginning of the book very much. The first couple of chapters were a lovely mix of reading about a subject I love (National Parks) which were written by someone with a refreshingly beautiful command of language. It was a pleasure to read... at first.

Then things kind of degraded in the middle, and by the last few chapters I found myself skimming to get through it. It turned into a personal diatribe about, well, quite a few things. Environmental abuses, political abuses (of the native americans, for instance), and that theme just just became the main thrust of the last third of the book. These are important issues, I don't argue that, but it became not at all a description of parks anymore. Perhaps this is where her personal journey went as she was writing it, so it's fitting that's how her book evolved, but it wasn't what I thought I was getting into and I didn't like feeling so much worse about EVERYTHING when I was done. I already feel awful about most of what she was discussing, and a book I'd hoped would be an optimistic look at the beauty we are trying to hold onto with National Parks became a very negative shame-fest.

My recommendation: read the first part and when you start to wonder what the heck is going on, stop. It will just keep making you feel worse until the end and he insight in to the parks goes away anyway.