Yellowstone National Park

Another great entry in the Wildsam National Park Guides, this book leans more towards being a reading experience than a traditional guide. While it offers some useful tidbits, such as the best coffee spots in the gateway towns, it provides a high-level overview of national park information. Additionally, it includes engaging interviews, stories, and interesting sidebars, making it a valuable addition to any collection of hiking guides and national park books.

While this guide covers both parks, it is primarily dedicated to Yellowstone, featuring at least 200 pages of detailed information about the park. Although this guide is light on dining and lodging options, similar to many national park books, it provides extensive insights into the history and ecology of the area, making it a valuable resource for those interested in hiking guides.

With more hikes than you could complete in a weeklong trip, you'll have plenty of options to choose from. These hiking guides feature over a hundred detailed hikes across every corner of the park, ranging from short half-hour walks to challenging overnight trips. Additionally, you'll find great information on preparedness and hazards in these national park books.

Thirty shorter hikes across the park. With hikes of less than a mile to about five miles, this book covers all corners of the park, from the Old Faithful area to the Tower / Canyon area. The book is also helpful as it gives serveral lists like best with children, best for waterfalls, best for wildflowers, and several others. This helps simplify the decision making about which trails to hike.

A good map is essential for navigating around Yellowstone and discovering its major attractions. Given that Yellowstone spans over 3,500 square miles, the scale of the map may not provide much detail on individual hikes. For more specific information, you would want to consider the hiking guides available in the map pack that divides the park into quadrants at a much reduced scale, which can also be found in various national park books.

This guide covers eighteen day hikes, which are scattered throughout the park and vary in distance and difficulty levels. Each hike includes a highlighted map and elevation profiles to aid your exploration. For those particularly interested in the Old Faithful area, there is a dedicated section in the hiking guides and a separate national park book that focuses exclusively on day hikes in that region.

This is a fantastic general field guide, ideal for any outdoor enthusiast. It begins with a brief introduction to the ecology and geology of the area, complete with a pictorial guide to the region's rocks and minerals. Following this, the guide features sections on mushrooms, plants, insects, animals, and tracks, as well as a look at the night sky. It's an essential resource among hiking guides and national park books for those looking to explore nature.

This guidebook shows the most likely areas to see wildlife.  There is a map of both parks, with specific locations and the species one is likely to see.  Covering sixteen larger mammals, a dozen birds, and a gallery of smaller animals, this book will help find the bears, wolves, bison, and swans that make the trip memorable.

Rick McIntyre was part of the wolf reintroduction project at Yellowstone. To begin with, he was part of the public relations effort - traveling, giving talks, and when in season, interacting with the park visitors. Later, he transitioned to full-time wolf observation. This is the story of Wolf 8 - the smallest pup of the first transplanted wolves. He became the alpha male of the pack and rose to fame as he led the pack over the years. 

Mountain men and explorers were not the first humans to experience Yellowstone. This book, a valuable addition to national park books, covers Native American history of the region from the Clovis people to the tribes that were displaced at the end of the 19th century to make way for the park. It also serves as a great resource for hiking guides, highlighting the rich cultural heritage of this stunning area.

A comprehensive history of the park's founding, centered on 1871 to 1873. The book covers the advocacy for the park and the politics around the reconstruction and settlement of the West.  Obviously, Native America tribes in the region were impacted and that conflict is covered in the book as well.

A good general history book focused on 1800 to the present, it covers the discovery of the area by American explorers, the creation of the park, early days, and modern era events like the wolf reintroduction. This book is a great addition to any collection of national park books and can serve as an excellent resource alongside popular hiking guides.

This self-described 'revisionist' history of the park offers a compelling perspective, focusing not just on its natural beauty but also on the darker aspects of its past, such as the violence of the Indian Wars, human greed, and the drive to 'civilize' the frontier. For those interested in exploring this alternate viewpoint, it complements various national park books and hiking guides that delve into the complexities of the area.

Part travelogue of the author's adventures in the area and part advocacy, this book serves as one of the essential national park books. It highlights the ongoing conflict between nature and development in the region, while also addressing important topics such as fire management and wolf reintroduction, making it a valuable resource for those interested in hiking guides.

Yellowstone has been called the American Serengeti. This author takes the term and applies it more generally to the Great Plains and the animal abundance and diversity of yesteryear. We can apply this to Yellowstone, as all of the species found refuge or have reestablished here.  The book covers pronghorn, bison, grizzly bears, grey wolves, and coyotes. 

This guide will help visitors capture images of Yellowstone's natural beauty, geological wonders, and wildlife.  It provides very specific advice on where and how to get those memorable shots.

See full review on Recent Reads.

This isn't just another guide to making art; it's a collection where artists and their art explore various aspects of Yellowstone's natural environment, covering everything from birds to mammals to plants. The prose is diverse due to the numerous co-authors contributing to the book, offering a unique perspective that complements other national park books and provides insights valuable for those who enjoy hiking guides.