From the Bookshelf of Baltimore County Public Library Summer Reading BCPL SRC …

[close] Let me just say to begin, that I love our National Parks System. I have a loose plan to visit all of them someday before I die. The reason I picked this book off the library shelves is because I love the National Parks.

That being said... This is an okay book. There are 10 chapters, each one devoted to a national park that the author's family visited over the course of a year. For most of the trips, the author's wife accompanied him and for all the trips, so did his young children (ages 7 and 9). I enjoyed reading about the family adventures in these parks; so much so, that I have moved a couple of the parks up on my priority list to visit. But this was only part of the focus of this book.

The rest of the book is spent expounding the dangers of climate change and the effect that change will have on these specific national parks. Glaciers are melting faster than projected; beetles are surviving not-so-cold winters in record numbers and eating/killing lots of trees; sea levels will rise and wipe out coastlands and wetlands. Okay, alright already. I get it. Some of what makes these parks great are in danger of being significantly altered or in disappearing altogether.

So? The author just leaves the reader hanging. "I'm really glad that I had a chance to take my kids to the parks before irreparable harm is done to them by a changing climate. No, I'm not going to go out of my way to help alleviate climate change. I'm not going to ask any of the hundreds of scientists and climatologists that I interviewed for my doomsday forecasts how the average Joe can help keep our park viable." There was not a single method that anyone, average Joe or no, could do to save "America's Most Endangered National Parks." There wasn't even a statement saying to contact the National Parks Service for more information about anything.

Because of the lack of 'things' that could be done to help save the parks, the science about how endangered the parks are is just so much preaching. My hope is that a new edition in a few years will show aspects of the parks that most people don't encounter, some (only a little) science to show the danger that the parks are in, and ways that I can help to save the National Parks system.