REVIEW ESSAYS

National Parks in Transnational Context

Mary McPartland

Civilizing Nature: National Parks in Global Historical Perspective edited by Bernhard

Gissibl, Sabine Hohler, and Patrick Kupper. New York: Berghahn, 2012. vii
294 pp.; figures, bibliography, index; clothbound, $120.00; paperbound, $34.95.
Creating Wilderness: A Transnational History of the Swiss National Park by Patrick
Kupper. New York: Berghahn, 2014. vi 266 pp., figures, bibliography, index;
clothbound, $95.00.
National Parks beyond the Nation: Global Perspectives on Americas Best Idea
edited by Adrian Howkins, Jared Orsi, and Mark Fiege. Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 2016. xiii 319 pp., figures; bibliography, index; paperbound,
$34.95.
Origin stories matter. They speak to values and ideals, even when their truth is
more mythical or aspirational than literal. Yellowstone National Parks origin story
has popularly been recounted as an original American idea (Americas best idea,
in fact) that was celebrated and copied around the world. Such a claim, however,
ignores the broader context that led to Yellowstones establishmentand the establishment of other national parks around the world.
These three books result from an inclination among historians in many elds to
ask questions about transnational, international, world, or global history. They are
part of historiographies that are already well established in the elds of environmental and conservation history, and they join other works that critique public
lands from indigenous perspectives. However, transnational park history historiography itself is still relatively new (all three cite Ian Tyrrells 2012 article, Americas
National Parks: The Transnational Creation of National Space in the Progressive
Era) but appears likely to grow. Public historians interested in environmental and
conservation historynot to mention national parks and public landswill nd
many ideas and examples worth considering in these books. So will historians
interested in how public institutions are shaped by the interplay of local, national,
and transnational factors.
These works, especially the two compilations, show that the question of who
was rst in the national park game still has some currency, but that scholarship has

293

largely moved beyond rehashing the US origin question. All three books convincingly disprove the notion that the United States alone created the idea of a national
park, instead providing ample evidence that it has been created and amended (and
amended again) through ongoing transnational and international processes. The idea
of Yellowstone as the original, and exemplary, park still has currency, but it has lost
much of its lodestar luster. Over the past century and a half, there has not been one
xed concept of a national park in the United States, let alone in the rest of the world.
Even the International Union for Conservation of Natures eorts to systematize
categories of protected lands have not led to uniformities around the globe.
What these works do especially well is demonstrate that the creation of national
parks and other federally protected lands around the world have generally reected
primarily local and national philosophies about parks, conservation, and nature and
only secondarily models gleaned from other countries. American national park
models have thus been inuential in various places and at various times, but so
have those of other countries. Although the authors analyze how their topics t into
broad frameworks and networks, the importance of the local recurs as a theme.
National, transnational, and international ideas may be inuential, but parks are
still rooted in specic spaces. The concept of borderlands and frontiers is another
thread that runs through these works, as are the roles played by imperialism and,
later, decolonization.
The national part of national parks remains important even while asking
questions about transnational connections and contexts. Collectively these authors
provide numerous examples of how national parks can reect who isand, importantly, is notconsidered part of the nation, the larger imagined community that
resides within a nation-state. They also provide concrete examples of how nations
and nationalism have varied at dierent times and places. For example, several
essays demonstrate how some national parkseither at their founding or as they
have adapted to changing political, social, and cultural moreshave attempted to
reect a vision of nationhood that is inclusive rather than exclusive. Additionally,
several scholars, as a result of their expertise in environmental or conservation
history, have asked questions about transnational scientic communities that have
shaped national parks. The evidence that they have found is some of the strongest
proof that the Yellowstone model (even accounting for diverse interpretations of
it) is not the norm around the world.
In Creating Wilderness, Patrick Kupper argues that the Swiss national park idea,
rooted in scientic research, conservation, and strict protection, provided a new,
viable alternate to the American wilderness-plus-recreation model. He begins his
book (originally published in German in 2012) with an argument against 1872 as the
origin point for the national park idea. Kupper instead argues that the turn of the
twentieth century was the key moment, with the rise of an international conservation movement consisting primarily of individuals from European and European
settler societies. (Ian Tyrrell also argues in favor of this timeline.) Kupper demonstrates that the inspiration for the Swiss National Park, founded in 1914, drew upon
294

The Public Historian / Vol. 38 / November 2016 / No. 4

the idea of Yellowstone; however, he contends that the actual plans involved
a deliberate reinterpretation of the American national park idea (3).
Kupper superbly analyzes the contexts, individuals, organizations, and politics
that led to the establishment of the Swiss National Park. He then moves forward in
time to evaluate how the parks administration worked in practice over subsequent
decades. The goal of freely developing nature turned out to be impossible for
a variety of reasons, and Kupper shows how scientic research in the park gradually shifted from the 1920s to the 1990s (220). Readers interested in early
twentieth-century Swiss conservation (especially its international connections), the
bureaucracy of setting up a new national park (particularly one based on a new,
science-focused national park idea), and theoretical ideas about the constructed
nature of national parks and wilderness will nd reward in this work.
Civilizing Nature, a work that Kupper edited with Bernhard Gissibl and Sabine
Hohler, provides a series of essays on national parks from Mexico to Malaysia. Like
Creating Wilderness, it is part of The Environment in History: International Perspectives series. The selection of essays emerged from a 2008 conference held at the
German Historical Institute in Washington, DC. In their introduction, the editors
describe national parks as transnational parks: globalized localities that owe their
establishment to transnational processes of learning, pressure, support, and
exchange (2). The thirteen essays that follow endorse this thesis. The book meets
its aim of moving conservation scholarship in a new direction by providing analysis
of the national (and not just the park) part of national parks.
The book is organized into three sections. The rst addresses the civilizing
nature of national parks. The essays in this section examine national parks
connections to exploration, imperialism, and colonization. Karen Jones analyzes
Yellowstones role in the birth of the national park movement and the ways that
changing cultural, scientic, and environmental ideas shaped Yellowstones early
management practices. Melissa Harper and Richard White analyze the early creation of national parks in four British settler societies (United States, Australia,
Canada, and New Zealand) and show that ideas were more likely to be borrowed
transnationally as park systems (not just parks) were established. Caroline Ford
writes that nature protection in French coloniesespecially in Africawas based
on scientic ideas, particularly the model of the botanical garden as a laboratory.
Jeyamalar Kathirithamby-Wells investigates how the incongruous establishment of
a national park in colonial Malaysia ended up tting into the context of the countrys postcolonial democratization and nation building. Gissibl examines how ideas
about nature conservation have been transferred between continents, using East
Germany and former German colonies in eastern Africa as examples.
The second section of Civilizing Nature focuses on how nature has been nationalized and territorialized. Kupper provides a shorter version of the argument
developed in Creating Wilderness. Anna-Katharina Wobse analyzes how the League
of Nations and the United Nations promoted the preservation of heritage, helping
universalize the idea of a common human heritage as well as the idea that this
Review Essays

295

heritage could partly be safeguarded by national parks. Brad Martin examines

indigenous environmental activism, specically how the Inuvialuit built transnational political relationships that helped challenge the imposition of universalist
conservation practices during the creation of Canadas Northern Yukon National
Park (158), while Etienne Benson compares eorts to radio track large carnivores in
the United States (Yellowstone) and Nepal (Royal Chitwan). In so doing, Benson
shows how this research challenged ideas about national park boundaries and the
nature of wilderness.
The third section addresses how nature has been categorized on various levels,
including the national and international, and how these levels have interacted.
Emily Wakild contends that the establishment of Mexicos national parks resulted
from revolutionary social and political reforms, plus transnational networks (especially in forestry). Henny J. van der Windt describes how the Yellowstone model
initially had little appeal in the Netherlands because of the lack of American-style
wilderness and an aversion to overt nationalism, but the model was later adapted
both there and in Dutch colonies. Michael Lewis studies how Indira Gandhis
policies seemed poised to prioritize a people-centered approach to environmentalism that put social justice at its core in India; however, the system of national
parks and tiger reserves that was created hewed closely to international national
park and environmental ideas (224). Finally, Carolin Firouzeh Roeder analyzes how
the intersection of empires, networks, and nations over the longue duree led to the
creation of a national park in the Republic of Yugoslavia (now part of Slovenia).
Like Civilizing Nature, the excellent book National Parks beyond the Nation,
edited by Adrian Howkins, Jared Orsi, and Mark Fiege, also emerged from a symposium. This one took place at Colorado State Universitys Public Lands History
Center in 2011. The title of the volume frames its essays as responses to the charge
that national parks are Americas best idea. Many of the essays do address that
topic in part, but their strength lies in not spending needless time ghting this paper
tiger. Instead, they oer a nuanced look at the ways that American park ideas,
especially Yellowstone, have or have not animated discussions in other countries,
as well as how national park ideas have operated at local, national, transnational, and
international scales (8). For instance, the editors essay about Mount Rainier National
Park (Washington), Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument (Arizona), and an abortive eort in the 1960s to create a national park of sorts in Antarctica demonstrates
how park ideas have interacted at these three dierent levels.
The book is organized around three themes: origins, ideas, and boundaries. Alan
MacEacherns essay charts the early relationship between Canadas Dominions
Parks Branch (est. 1911) and the US National Park Service (est. 1916). Theodore
Catton analyzes how New Zealands national parks drew in part on American
ideas, but also on the countrys British Commonwealth and bicultural (Ma ori and
Pa keha ) identities. Wakild, one of three scholars whose work appears in both edited
volumes, looks at how the interplay of international scientic communities and the
exploration of national frontiers led to the establishment of national parks in
296

The Public Historian / Vol. 38 / November 2016 / No. 4

Argentina, Brazil, and the United States. Kupper analyzes how national parks have
been used as scientic research sites, how science has been used in national park
management, and how transnational scientic networks have aected research in
parks.
The second section of National Parks beyond the Nation focuses on how some
international templates for national parks have faced challenges in particular
regional and national contexts. Jane Carruthers demonstrates how the national
park model in South Africa has faced challenges in the countrys democratic era,
due to South African national parks association with apartheid. Steven Rodriquez
argues that Indonesias national parks failed to meet their conservation and development goals because the park model chosen represented only elite, not popular,
interests and values. Chris Contes essay about conservation in Africas Great Rift
Valley argues that ideas about nature and wildness popularized by National Geographic have been detrimental, because they treat locals as interlopers and threats to
nature, rather than integral parts of it.
The third section is about boundaries. Karen Routledge argues that transborder
grizzly bear issues in Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park have operated at
multiple levels (national, regional, and local) and have required balancing scientic
knowledge and public perceptions. Ann McGrath compares how Uluru (previously
called Ayers Rock) in Australia and Devils Tower in the United States have gradually
included more control by indigenous peoples (much more so in Australia than the
United States). She argues that the relationship between colonizers and colonized
(the latter of which often includes indigenous peoples) should be understood as
transnational. Mark Carey draws on examples from Peru and the United States to
contend that media accounts about climate change say more about popular perceptions of parks and the relationship between people and nature than they do
about science (259). He writes that the depictions of nature as static (in both
countries), locals as passive victims of climate change (Peru), and the division of
nature from culture (United States)and, as a result, parks from their surrounding
communitieshinder eorts to develop eective climate change adaptations. Also
in this last section, Jose Drummond analyzes how Brazils 1979 overhaul of its park
system drew on national priorities, international nongovernmental organizations,
and various national park modelsand how this led to the creation of a park
system that represented all of Brazils ecotypes.
Drummond concludes his essay with a memorable simile: In the Brazilian
context, national parks, Americas best idea . . . became something like the stone
in a stone soupit is present, but it is not the main course (228). Paul S. Sutter
chooses a dierent metaphor, arguing that there is much to be gained by decentering, even provincializing the United States role in the history of protected lands
(284). These comparisons are crucial to todays historiography: at times, Yellowstone and the US National Park System are important, but the scholarship is more
interesting when it moves past automatic consideration of them as the origin point
for all national parks.
Review Essays

297

These three books demonstrate the value of approaching national park histories
in new ways, whether the history is from above or below, or framed from a local or
transnational perspective. Above all, these works show how writing about national
park origins can shed new light on the societies in which we live. Park histories
provide excellent opportunities to examine how local communities and national
identities are tied to transnational exchanges of ideas, particularly those related to
science and conservation. The editors of these works express optimism about
continued research into transnational national park history, as well as the future
of national parks. In addition to enjoying these ne books, one can look forward to
the conversations and future scholarship they will inspire.


Mary McPartland manages archival collections for the National Park Services
Historic American Buildings Survey, Historic American Engineering Record, and
Historic American Landscapes Survey. She received a PhD in history from George
Washington University.

Telling Larger Stories: Five Additions to the National

Park Service Ocial Handbook Series
Stephen R. Hausmann

The Reconstruction Era: Official National Park Service Handbook edited by Robert K.
Sutton and John A. Latschar. Fort Washington, PA: Eastern National, 2016. 180
pp.; illustrations; paperbound, $12.95.
Asians and Pacific Islanders and the Civil War: Official National Park Service
Handbook edited by Carol A. Shively. Fort Washington, PA: Eastern National,
2015. 258 pp.; illustrations; paperbound, $14.95.
American Indians and the Civil War: Official National Park Service Handbook edited
by Robert K. Sutton and John A. Latschar. Fort Washington, PA: Eastern
National, 2013. 216 pp.; illustrations; paperbound, $12.95.

298

The Public Historian / Vol. 38 / November 2016 / No. 4

The War of 1812: Official National Park Service Handbook produced by the Northeast
Regional Office, National Park Service. Fort Washington, PA: Eastern National,
2013. 160 pp.; illustrations; paperbound, $12.95.
The Civil War Remembered: Official National Park Service Handbook edited by
Robert K. Sutton and John A. Latschar. Fort Washington, PA: Eastern National,
2011. 176 pp.; illustrations, index; paperbound, $10.95.
In 2011, the Organization of American Historians and the National Park Service
(NPS) commissioned historians Anne Mitchell Whisnant, Marla R. Miller, Gary B.
Nash, and David Thelen to conduct a wide-ranging survey of the state of history
interpretation and presentation in Americas national parks and other NPSmanaged sites, such as battleelds and memorials. In the surveys report, Imperiled
Promise: The State of History in the National Park Service, the authors outlined many
trouble spots and areas much in need of improvement. Whisnant, Miller, Nash, and
Thelen did, however, single out the National Park Service history handbook series
as a particular bright spot in NPS interpretive work. This series, according to the
authors, included publications that were attractive, high-quality . . . [and] accessible, well suited for assignment in college classrooms, and very useful for interpretation at NPS sites.1
The ve newest editions of this series are worthy contributions to this wing of
the National Park Services public history educational mission. These handbooks
oer concise, although still thorough, looks at historical themes associated with
a variety of NPS units. Since 2011, Eastern National Press has published ve new
National Park Service Handbooks, four on Civil War history (coinciding with the
wars sesquicentennial) and one on the War of 1812 (marking its two hundredth
anniversary). Each is a glossy, image-heavy collection of timelines, maps, and essays
written by both leading academic historians and an admirably broad spectrum of
experts from outside the academy, covering a wide array of thematic topics. The
handbooks serve two roles: educating Park Service sta on the deeper history and
context of their particular sites in order to improve interpretation, and oering the
wider public an opportunity to further explore historical themes many NPS sites
touch upon. In both cases, the handbooks stand at the front line of the NPS public
history agenda.
The National Park Service handbook series is not new. The NPS published the
rst edition, Little Bighorn Battleeld, in 1949, and the roots of the series date back at
least to 1929 and the establishment of the Field Division of Education of the
National Park Service, one of the rst overt attempts by the NPS at training park
rangers in historical interpretation. The earliest handbooks were the product of
single authors, written both by people trained in the academy, such as Robert M.
1 Anne Mitchell Whisnant, Marla R. Miller, Gary B. Nash, and David Thelen, Imperiled Promise:
The State of History in the National Parks Service (Bloomington, IN: Organization of American
Historians, 2011), 50.

Review Essays

299

Utley, and by other experts in particular sites; Charles E. Hatch Jr., for instance,
author of handbooks on the Yorktown Battleeld Site and Jamestown National
Historic Site was both an NPS historian and professor of chemistry at Johns
Hopkins University. From its founding, the handbook series oered an expansive
take on authorial voice and interpretation, never limiting essayists to history professors or even university-trained historians.
The early editions also reected many of the historiographical pitfalls of their
particular eras. Many of the rst few handbooks use antiquated, sometimes insensitive, language and are narrow in both purpose and historical perspective by 2016s
standards. Two of the earliest, Little Bighorn Battleeld (1949) and Saratoga National
Historic Park (1950), deal very strictly with troop movements, plans of battle, and
biographies of notable generals and politicians. These early handbooks reect the
limited scale of interpretation attempted by mid-twentieth-century NPS sta. Even
later editions, for example 1982s Exploring the American West, 18031879, take
a decidedly white and eastern perspective in discussing American western conquest. In this handbook, explorers are described as going Indian on the plains and
southwestern indigenous societies are found living in wretched stick wickiups . . .
subsisting on snakes, rodents and insects.2 These earlier editions stand as testament to the sometimes spotty record of public history in the National Park Service.
By contrast, the ve newest editions, though all are at least in part connected to war
and the military, do a much more eective job of placing the people and events
covered in their broader contexts. Moreover, all ve are self-conscious attempts at
including narratives often not included in popular histories or even many textbooks. By this measure alone, they are an improvement on their predecessors.
The War of 1812 handbook is largely successful in providing an overview of the
war and making the case that it should be considered, as Alan Taylor in his opening
essay of the book puts it, the second act of the American Revolution.3 The books
essays cover a wide array of the wars military aairs and political implications.
Jeanne T. and David S. Heidler ably discuss the land campaigns of the war and put
due emphasis on both British- and American-allied Indian societies. Of particular
note are two essays late in the book dealing with the war in American and Canadian
national memories, by Matthew Dennis and Donald E. Graves respectively. Both
do an exemplary job of showing how dissimilar national interpretations served
similar patriotic means in the two countries. Reection on public interpretation at
historic sites and monuments is front and center in all ve NPS handbooks. The
War of 1812 Handbook also includes a useful and particularly detailed list of NPS
sites both directly and indirectly connected to the War of 1812. Such a list is either
missing or lacking in detail in the other four books in this collection, a curious and
2 Barry Mackintosh, Exploring the American West, 18031879 (Washington, DC: Department of
the Interior, 1982), 21.
3 Alan Taylor, From the American Revolution to the War of 1812, in The War of 1812, Ocial
National Park Service Handbook, ed. John Latschar and Robert K. Sutton (Fort Washington, PA:
Eastern National, 2013), 17.

300

The Public Historian / Vol. 38 / November 2016 / No. 4

disappointing omission considering the depth and obvious practical uses of this
editions section.
The four other recent handbooks also handle military conict, though none are
primarily about the famous battles or armies of popular lore. The rst, 2011s The
Civil War Remembered, presents sixteen short essays on the war in American
memory, both in its immediate aftermath and the century and a half following.
The undergirding theme of the handbook is the continued relevance of the Civil
War to American politics and society. In his introductory essay, James McPherson
argues, The issues that stood at the heart of the crisis remain current and relevant
today.4 To historians, this claim may seem self-evident. But to visitors to national
parks, especially students wondering how a particular eld trip may relate to their
day-to-day lives, this is a crucial point to emphasize, and the handbook never ceases
in pushing the notion of relevancy in strong language. Park Service sta can and
should use this handbook as a starting point in expressing to visitors the importance of Civil War memory to twenty-rst-century politics.
Two other handbooks are less self-conscious about the role of public history at
historic sites. American Indians and the Civil War, published in 2013, is the rst of
two handbooks that cover groups of people whose experiences have not traditionally been front and center in Civil War historiography or popular understanding of
the conict. Indeed, the American Civil War has long suered under black/white
and North/South binaries that left little room for inclusion of North American
Indians and other people who did not necessarily neatly check one of these boxes.
The essays in this volume display the range of Native American experiences during
and immediately after the Civil War. Chapters cover the AmericanDakota confrontation in the Minnesota borderlands, the all-Indian First Michigan Sharpshooters (formed by Ojibway, Menominee, Potawatomi, and other Native Americans
from the Great Lakes region), the Civil War in Indian Territory, the Navajo Nation,
and the implications of the 1868 Treaty of Bosque Redondo. Two additional chapters cover the Bear River and Sand Creek Massacres. The breadth of coverage
serves the handbooks underlying thesis: the Civil War implicated Native Americans in all of its facets, as soldiers in the US and CSA militaries, as decidedly nonAmerican military forces, and as civilians caught in the maelstrom.
Mae Timbimboo Parry and Robert K. Suttons essay, The Bear River Massacre,
encapsulates the far-reaching eects of the Civil War into Indian life. The account
of the massacre, written by the granddaughter of a survivor, recounts how Union
soldiers, recruited in California and sent east to Utah to protect settlers and telegraph lines, killed over three hundred Shoshone men, women, and children after
a series of incidents between settlers, miners, and Indians. By including an essay
about a Civil Warera massacre not well known nationally, the handbook serves an
4 James McPherson, Introduction, in The Civil War Remembered, Ocial National Park
Service Handbook, ed. John Latschar and Robert K. Sutton (Fort Washington, PA: Eastern National,
2011), 19.

Review Essays

301

important purpose by attempting to elevate Bear Creek to the same level of public
knowledge as the Sand Creek Massacre, which also is aorded its own chapter.
Moreover, the Bear Creek story shows how the ripples of battles in Virginia and
Georgia radiated out into the Great Basin and brought violence to people far away
from the Civil Wars front lines. Timbimboo and Suttons essay is an excellent
example of how the NPS can and should include authoritative historical interpretation from nonacademics.
Similarly, the 2015 handbook Asians and Pacic Islanders and the Civil War aims
to incorporate trans-Pacic immigrants into the story of the Civil War. Much like
American Indians and the Civil War, one of this handbooks main goals is to broaden
the geographic and demographic scope of the war to include regions and groups
often left out of the traditional, dichotomous narrative. The volume begins with
a striking photograph: among the aging, bearded, white veterans of the TwentySeventh Connecticut Volunteer Infantry sits Antonio Dardelle. He is clearly of
Asian ethnicity, write Gloria Lee and Mike Weinstein, who go on to ask, how
many [similar veterans] have slipped into obscurity without acknowledgment?5
Quite a few, according to the essays of this handbook, including those discussing
Conjee Rustumjee Cojoujee Bey, a Punjabi sailor who served on a number of US
Navy vessels, and Hawaii-born Prince Romerson, who served in both the navy and
the Fifth Regiment of the Massachusetts Colored Volunteer Cavalry.
Asians and Pacic Islanders and the Civil War accomplishes more than simply
recounting the deeds and stories of soldiers and sailors. The handbook describes in
detail the so-called Pig Trade in forced East Asian labor across the Pacic to South
America and the Caribbean. Also of use to NPS unit employees, educators, and
other public historians are the two postwar sections, which directly link the struggles for Asian American citizenship of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries
to the experiences of the Civil War and antebellum periods. Again, expanding
narratives and forging connections is the evident and successful goal of this
handbook.
The most recent NPS handbook, The Reconstruction Era, uniquely does not
contain any addendum listing related NPS sites. Indeed, it is an oft-lamented
refrain that the federal government does not maintain any historical sites directly
related to the Reconstruction period.6 Although lack of a dedicated site is indeed an
oversight on the part of the Park Service, the implication that no existing NPS parks
address Reconstruction is not quite accurate. Interpretation of Bostons John J.
Smith House, for example, covers the history of African American abolitionist and
5 Gloria Lee and Mike Weinstein, Forgotten Warriors, in Asians and Pacic Islanders and the
Civil War, ed. Carol A. Shivley (Fort Washington, PA: Eastern National, 2015), 4.
6 For recent discussion of the NPS and its public treatments of Reconstruction, see Gregory P.
Downs and Kate Masur, Theres No National Site Devoted to ReconstructionYet, Atlantic, April
29, 2015; Jennifer Schuessler, Taking Another Look at the Reconstruction Era, New York Times,
August 24, 2015; Sydney Neely, Park Service Ocial: Marking Reconstruction-era sites long overdue, Memphis Commercial Appeal, May 20, 2016.

302

The Public Historian / Vol. 38 / November 2016 / No. 4

Massachusetts state representative John J. Smith from the antebellum period until
well into Reconstruction. Similarly, biographical commemorative sites such as
the Andrew Johnson National Historic Site in Tennessee and the Booker T.
Washington National Monument in Virginia both deal considerably with the social
and political turmoil of Reconstruction through local and national lenses, by connecting them to their sites subjects.
Still, the National Park Service could do a better job of handling Reconstruction
interpretation at existing sites, and a Reconstruction-specic unit would go a long
way toward educating the public about these critical years in American history and
telling the stories of those who lived through the period. One well-placed step in
this direction is The Reconstruction Era handbook. Written in the same lively
language as its recent predecessors and boasting the same impressive battalion of
essayists (including Bancroft Prizewinners Ari Kelman, Eric Foner, and David
Blight), this volume boils the entire complicated period into fourteen manageable
sections. The book does not shy away from complication, either. Blights essay,
When Did Reconstruction End?, answers its titular question with ambivalence.
Chapters like Blights strongly push the continued relevance of Reconstruction on
readers and never shy away from covering the injustice and culture of violent
terrorism endemic to the period and subsequent years.
Taken together, these ve handbooks indicate an impressive commitment to the
National Park Services mission to serve the public by telling the nations history.
These volumes are not hagiographies; they strive to include narratives that subvert
the usual stories of the War of 1812 and Civil War by including actors and places
typically not included in public imagination. Moreover, they are illustrated,
document-driven, and include useful maps and timelines, making for easy reference and ensuring the eye is never bored with an imposing wall of text. In many
ways, these handbooks are exemplary public historical texts.
Given that these handbooks are published and sold by the National Park Service
at NPS units, however, it seems prudent for the volumes to better integrate NPS
sites into the text of the histories themselves. As it stands, each volume (with the
exception of The Reconstruction Era) includes a brief list of related NPS units, but
they are short, lack detail, and are relegated to the back of the books. Why not
include direct references to sites within the texts of the essays themselves, or
include locations as sidebars accompanying the essays? Currently, the essays
which make up the bulk of each handbook feel strangely removed from the
National Park Service and its constituent units, despite being commissioned by
the NPS in part for use by park ocials. More integrated NPS unit information
would make these already useful texts indispensable to park sta, visitors, and
nonaliated educators.
This particular omission aside, these latest additions for the National Park
Service Ocial Handbook series are of immediate and apparent utility to public
historians. They ably transmit the latest historical research into easily digestible,
jargon-free text, buttressed by narrative-driven stories, striking images, and dozens
Review Essays

303

of primary sources. The authorial combination of professional historians, independent researchers, archivists, and other experts also helps give the volumes a sense of
shared voice, with no one group standing as sole arbiters of historical interpretation. Taken together, the newest National Park Service Handbooks on the War of
1812 and Civil War further the NPSs educational mission and should be useful tools
to public historians.


Stephen Hausmann is a doctoral candidate at Temple University. His research

focuses on environmental history in national and state parks in the American

West, and he is currently writing a dissertation on the Black Hills of South
Dakota and Wyoming.

304

The Public Historian / Vol. 38 / November 2016 / No. 4