[.uk] The National Grasslands: A Guide to America's ... (ISBN 0803283202)

Text is interesting but a bit schizophrenic, with pretty pictures:
In this book, Moul tells a story that needed telling. While we have histories of other types of public lands, I'm not aware of any other history of our National Grasslands (managed, like National Forests, by the Forest Service). With the history, you get a collection of full-color photos that should persuade you of the beauty of these grasslands. Moul tells the story in three parts. The first part provides a social history of the Great Plains and some economic and political history to the Great Depression and Dust Bowl years. He takes a broad approach, talking about the New Deal in general before moving to the Resettlement Administration that ended up buying the land that eventually became National Grasslands. He ends this part with the management of the National Grasslands, taking a position very sympathetic to Forest Service's multiple use management. Moul is also very sympathetic to the ranchers who graze their private livestock on the public grasslands, a position that is not really consistent with his position in Part III of the book. The second part of the book provides a review of each NG, based on interviews with their staff. This might be a useful reference but it reads like a list, and the text never comes alive. In the third part, Moul lays out three possible futures for the national grasslands: incremental change from the status quo, a return to the grazer-dominated days of the 1940s and 1950s, or a more environmentally-friendly management policy, replacing cattle with bison and other native species. Though his history spoke well of option two, his future sides with option three. Part of the disjuncture here reflects the fact that, throughout the book, Moul is never critical of the players, agencies, or policies. Since those have changed over time, it sometimes seems that he's uncritically supporting contradictory visions of our grasslands.