This superb anthology brings together some of the most powerful and compelling writing about the Grand Canyon—stories, essays, and poems written across five centuries by people inhabiting, surviving, and attempting to understand what one explorer called the "Great Unknown." The Grand Canyon Reader includes traditional stories from native tribes, reports by explorers, journals by early tourists, and contemporary essays and stories by such beloved writers as John McPhee, Ann Zwinger, Edward Abbey, Terry Tempest Williams, Barry Lopez, Linda Hogan, and Craig Childs. Lively tales written by unschooled river runners, unabashedly popular fiction, and memoirs stand alongside finely crafted literary works to represent full range of human experience in this wild, daunting, and inspiring landscape.

The Grand Canyon has long inspired deep emotions and responses. For the Native Americans who lived there, the canyon was home, full of sacred meanings. For the first European settlers to see it, the canyon drove them to great exploration adventures and Wild West dreams of wealth. The canyon also held deep importance for America’s pioneer conservationists such as Teddy Roosevelt, John Muir, and Aldo Leopold, and it played a central role in the emerging environmental movement. The Grand Canyon became a microcosm of the history and evolving values of the National Park Service, long conflicted between encouraging tourism and protecting nature. Many vivid characters shaped the canyon’s past. Its largest story is one of cultural history and changing American visions of the land. Grand Canyon: A History of a Natural Wonder and National Park is a mixture of great storytelling, unlikely characters, and important ideas. The book will appeal to both general readers and scholars interested in seeking a broader understanding of the canyon.

A Bibliography covering one half century of Southwest literature; a sequel to Farquhar's "The Books of the Colorado River & the Grand Canyon."

Major John Wesley Powell and nine other men set out to explore the unmapped stretches of the Colorado River on May 24, 1869. The text is illustrated with period photographs and etchings, maps, and attractive contemporary pictures of the canyon in full color.