Cassandra Kircher was in her twenties when she was hired by the National Park Service, landing a life that allowed her to reinvent herself. For four years she collected entrance fees and worked in the dispatch office before being assigned as the first woman to patrol an isolated backcountry district of Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park. There, Kircher encountered wonder and beauty, accidents and death. Although she always suspected the mountains might captivate her, she didn’t realize that her adopted landscape would give her strength to confront where she was from—both the Midwest that Willa Cather fans will recognize, and a childhood filled with problems and secrets.

Divided and defined by geographic and psychological space, Far Flung begins in the Rockies but broadens its focus as Kircher negotiates places as distant as Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula, Russia’s Siberian valleys, and Wisconsin’s lake country, always with Colorado as a heartfelt pivot. These thirteen essays depict a woman coming to terms with her adoration for the wilds of the West and will resonate with all of us longing to better understand ourselves and our relationships to the places and people we love most.

Yellowstone has undergone a number of transitions in the 140 years since its national park designation in 1872. The period from the late 1930s through the early 1970s marked one of the most significant as the Park Service shifted focus from public recreation to interpretation and education. The vast wilderness and numerous awe-inspiring natural spectacles of the park became less objects of passive enjoyment and more subjects to be engaged, interpreted, and understood by visitors. The park was transformed from a playground into a classroom where active learning processes could take place. Charged with instituting these interpretive interactions were five remarkable ranger naturalists who served as both protectors and educators. Stephen Biddulph tells the story of the five men, his own father amongst them, tasked with inspiring a generation of visitors to the park.

Biddulph’s masterfully woven narrative—part biography, part historical narrative—offers both fascinating factual details about Yellowstone and charming colloquial story telling. The interpretive initiatives of the rangers—nature walks, campfire programs, game stalks, and auto caravans—are enlivened by the colorful personalities of the five men who conducted them. Historians will find that Five Old Men of Yellowstone provides a missing link in the park’s extensive literature, while its humor and sentiment make for an accessible book that will be enjoyed by park history buffs and curious visitors alike.

Part memoir, part reportage, and all good reading, Take Down Flag & Feed Horses is the first volume devoted to the daily work of staff members at Yellowstone National Park. Written by a retired National Park Service historian, the book is divided into two parts, the first chronicling daily life at Yellowstone and the second detailing the savage fires that hit the park during the summer of 1988 and their aftermath. Bill Everhart lived at the park during the summer of 1978, accompanying the superintendent and his staff of rangers, naturalists, and scientists on daily rounds. His lively anecdotes and observations will lure readers farther and farther into the book and perhaps into the park as well. He gives a gripping account of the unstoppable fires of 1988 and shows how fire, a presence in the Yellowstone ecosystem for thousands of years,
ensures biological diversity.
    
 One of an elite cadre of Park Service employees who served in the system for many years, Everhart would smile knowingly at a comrade's recollection of an old-timer who left often unnecessary instructions that regularly concluded with, "Take down flag & feed horses (TDF &; FH)." His book, a gentle excursion through places and among people, will be attractive to a wide range of readers.