Americas Public Lands

“An inspiring reminder of the incredible resource that is our public lands.” —Brendan Leonard, author of The Camping Life and Surviving the Great Outdoors Across 193 million acres of forests, mountains, deserts, watersheds, and grasslands, national forests provide a multitude of uses as...

At stake in 1896 was the new idea that some landscapes should be collectively, permanently owned by a democratic government. Although many people today think of public lands as an American birthright, their very existence was then in doubt and dependent on a merger of the talents of these two men. Natural Rivals examines a time of environmental threat and political dysfunction not unlike our own and reveals the complex dynamic that gave birth to America’s rich public lands legacy.

Since its inception, however, America’s public land system has been embroiled in controversy - caught in the push and pull between the desire to develop the valuable resources the land holds or conserve them. Alarmed by rising tensions over the use of these lands, hunter, angler, and outdoor enthusiast Mark Kenyon set out to explore the spaces involved in this heated debate, and learn firsthand how they came to be and what their future might hold.

One woman's enlightening trek through the natural histories, cultural stories, and present perils of thirteen national monuments.

The number of legal immigrants allowed into the United States in the 1960s was 300,000 a year. This increased reasonably to 600,000 by the 1980s. But in the 1990s, the rate accelerated to an average of more than a million a year. When the number of illegal immigrants is added to this, the total inflow during the 1990s was approximately twelve million.

These words, pounded out on a laptop at Cliven Bundy’s besieged Nevada ranch on April 6, 2014, ignited a new American revolution. Across the country, a certain type of citizen snapped to attention: This was the flashpoint the they’d been waiting for, a chance to help a fellow American stand up to a tyrannical and corrupt federal government. Up in Arms chronicles how an isolated clan of desert-dwelling Mormons became the guiding light - and then the outright leaders - of America’s Patriot movement.

In this brilliant, gracefully written, and important new book, former Secretary of the Interior and Governor of Arizona Bruce Babbitt brings fresh thought to questions of how we can build a future we want to live in.

Today, we are at a turning point as we face ecological and political crises that are rooted in conflicts over the land itself. But these problems can be solved if we draw on elements of our tradition that move us toward a new commonwealth - a community founded on the well-being of all people and the natural world.