This Is Dinosaur: Echo Park Country and Its Magic Rivers

by Wallace Stegner (Foreword)

Book by

Genres: Nature, History, Nonfiction

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1955

About the author

Wallace Earle Stegner was an American historian, novelist, short story writer, and environmentalist. Some call him "The Dean of Western Writers." He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972 and the U.S. National Book Award in 1977.

Reviews

[Wayne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book 23 of 2021: This is Dinosaur edited by Wallace Stegner

This book was originally published in 1955 as an introduction to Dinosaur National Monument for Congress. At the time, Echo Park at Dinosaur was under threat to be dammed. This is a modern treatment with a new forward by Terry Tempest Williams.

This is a conservation classic, but...its somewhat dated. Still, it is a beautiful book with great prose and photographs.

[Zack · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hm if you didn’t know the history and read it today, this book would come off as a relatively generic guide to a national park system unit with sections written by shockingly heavy hitters.

A couple things were dated, definitely written before climate change was a concern. The section on geology had an asterisk saying some parts were no longer considered accurate (but didn’t say which parts were inaccurate, so that’s a thumbs down).

This books makes me a little nostalgic for earlier eras of public lands advocacy. They still worked crazy hard and blazed many important trails, but they didn’t have climate change, didn’t have the realization of the horrors of capitalism. They put out a great book, but isn’t much different than what I could get for free at many visitor centers, and it played a huge role in protecting a really spectacular area.

[John Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Saved a great park from flooding. You get a little bit of, geology, paleontology, fauna and flora, some history, and a bunch of reasons you should go visit. Thanks, Wallace Stegner!

[Allan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a bit dated. Surprisingly their are not many published books about this national park. It makes a good primer for those planning a vist.