Foreword by Chris Johns -- Introduction and a brief history of the national parks: 1872-1972 -- Growing the system and telling a more complete story -- Alaska: doing it right the first time -- The politics of park policy -- Using the best available science -- Ecosystem thinking requires collaboration -- Interference in the mission -- Independence: finding a sustainable future for a perpetuity agency

"Wallace Stegner called the national park system one of the United States' best ideas. That good idea has led to an institution that has grown over the past one hundred years, and the park system now encompasses four hundred areas that host over three hundred million visitors in typical year. Jonathan Jarvis (as a ranger, biologist, and director of the National Park Service in the Obama administration) and Destry Jarvis (as an advocate, policy analyst, and lobbyist) have worked to better the parks for over forty years. They offer here a history of the National Park Service (NPS) and an argument for the NPS to become an independent agency-similar to the Smithsonian Institution and separated from the Department of the Interior. Their reasoning relates to politics, finances, and science, and their proposal aims to safeguard the future of our national parks"--