A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks

Harvard Book Store welcomes award-winning author Terry Tempest Williams for a discussion of her latest book, The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks, just as the National Park Service celebrates its Centennial this August.

From the Grand Tetons in Wyoming to Acadia in Maine to Big Bend in Texas and more, Williams creates a series of lyrical portraits that illuminate the unique grandeur of each place while delving into what it means to shape a landscape with its own evolutionary history into something of our own making. Part memoir, part natural history, and part social critique, The Hour of Land is a meditation and a manifesto on why wild lands matter to the soul of America.

“A collection of essays that’s a personal journey as much as a meditation on the purpose and relevance of national parks in the 21st century . . . The Hour of Land is one of the best nature books I’ve read in years, filled with seductive prose.’” —Andrea Wulf, The New York Times Book Review