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A review by book_concierge
The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America's National Parks by Terry Tempest Williams
3.0
Subtitle: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks
This is a book I would not have picked up were it not for being a book-club selection. I share the author’s love of this country’s National Parks, and of nature in general. I recently visited Theodore Roosevelt National Park for the first time, and was particularly interested in reading the chapter on that park. And, looking at the index, I noticed several other parks I was eager to read about: Big Bend, Arcadia, Gettysburg, Alcatraz Island and Cesar Chavez National Monument.
Williams is a good writer, and there are times when her descriptions take the reader straight to the park she is visiting. Some of these passages are downright poetic. However …
Williams spent less time on the park itself and its natural and/or historic wonders than she did on a political agenda, whether that be the mistreatment of Native Americans or the disturbing fervor of Civil War re-enactors (especially those portraying the Rebel forces) or, most often, the shameful policies of the then-current administration (G W Bush) with respect to mineral and drilling rights for big oil. I don’t even disagree with her point of view, but it wasn’t what I expected or wanted from this book. So I give it a middle-of-the-road 3-star rating.
This is a book I would not have picked up were it not for being a book-club selection. I share the author’s love of this country’s National Parks, and of nature in general. I recently visited Theodore Roosevelt National Park for the first time, and was particularly interested in reading the chapter on that park. And, looking at the index, I noticed several other parks I was eager to read about: Big Bend, Arcadia, Gettysburg, Alcatraz Island and Cesar Chavez National Monument.
Williams is a good writer, and there are times when her descriptions take the reader straight to the park she is visiting. Some of these passages are downright poetic. However …
Williams spent less time on the park itself and its natural and/or historic wonders than she did on a political agenda, whether that be the mistreatment of Native Americans or the disturbing fervor of Civil War re-enactors (especially those portraying the Rebel forces) or, most often, the shameful policies of the then-current administration (G W Bush) with respect to mineral and drilling rights for big oil. I don’t even disagree with her point of view, but it wasn’t what I expected or wanted from this book. So I give it a middle-of-the-road 3-star rating.