There's nothing like a good book or two to help you prepare for a national park visit, whether you're looking for some historical background, a trail or two to hike, or interested in the natural resources or local culture. With that in mind, here are a few titles you might consider in preparation of a visit to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming/Montana/Idaho.

Yellowstone: A Land Of Wild And Wonder

This 10x10-inch book is a showcase for the photography of Montana native Christopher Cauble. In its 120 pages, you’ll get a glimpse into the scenery, wildlife, and unique features of our first national park.

Produced by Riverbend Publishing, Yellowstone: A Land of Wild and Wonder is laid out in a high-key design, with a lot of white space around the one-per-page photos, many of them from the lesser-seen winter season. It’s a contemporary presentation, though overall reproductions may fall more into the cool-blue range and some muted colors.

A Week In Yellowstone's Thorofare: A Journey Through The Remotest Place

Mike Yochim, through his two previous books, Yellowstone and the Snowmobile and Protecting Yellowstone, has established himself as a legitimate voice and scholar of national park history. Now supplemented by a third book, A Week in Yellowstone’s Thorofare, Yochim has transitioned to something vastly more personal and far less academic. Diagnosed with ALS three years ago, the trajectory of Yochim’s active and engaged life came to a screeching halt, and so too did his long treks into Yellowstone’s vast wilderness. A tragic story, one might think, but not for Yochim. Instead, it’s a story of friendship, wildness, and beauty. But mostly it’s a story of love and expressing it for wilderness, and being grateful to these marvelous places we call national parks.

It’s a touching story, heading out for an eight-day trek with three close friends to explore Yellowstone’s Thorofare for perhaps the last time. Yochim brilliantly weaves together myriad narratives, touching on the essential themes of his life, each day a composite of something fundamental to his past, and his tenuous future.

Yellowstone Ranger

There are more than a few new books revolving around national parks, and the one that has provided the most wonderment and joy tied to rangering has been Yellowstone Ranger by Jerry Mernin, who spent more than three decades patrolling the front- and backcountry of Yellowstone National Park and left us with insights, hardships, humor, and great satisfaction from a career that left him wishing he could have had "another 32 years to work in Yellowstone."

Through page after page after page of this more than 350-page book, we're given a peek into the life of a national park ranger who only wanted to do the best job he could. Against today's headlines of sexual harassment, mismanagement, and budget shortfalls sullying the National Park Service, Ranger Mernin's book left me with pride in his career and no small measure of certainty that while he was exceptional at that job, he was not the exception.

A Weird And Wild Beauty: The Story Of Yellowstone, The World's First National Park

Erin Peabody has crafted a book on Yellowstone National Park that follows a common path in telling the story of how the world's first national park came about, but which through her deep research and colorful writing rises as an entertaining and informative work that deserves a space on every park lover's bookshelf.

I came to this book somewhat suspicous, in part due to the title, and in part due to the layout that at times distractingly inserts sidebars of material, some of which has little, if any, connection to Yellowstone. Is there a link between Yellowstone and Thomas Jefferson traveling to France in the early 1800s to promote the size of North America's moose for inclusion in a book on animals in America? While it's interesting to know that Martha Maxwell was a naturalist in the 19th century, she had no connection to Yellowstone, though she did play a role in launching the art of taxidermy.

The book traveled around my house, from kitchen table to family room table to office sideboard and back to family room. Some books grab you from the moment you read page one, and at first this book just didn't do that.

But once I forced myself to sit down with A Weird and Wild Beauty: The Story of Yellowstone, The World's First National Park, a wonderful story came to life.

The Year Yellowstone Burned: A Twenty-Five-Year Perspective

It’s hard to believe that it’s been more than a quarter-century since the massive fires burned through Yellowstone National Park that summer of 1988. Jeff Henry’s new book is a great look back at those smoke-filled days, especially for those at National Parks Traveler. I was on assignment for Flying Magazine covering the aircraft scene, and Editor Kurt Repanshek was there for The Associated Press. Henry’s words and photos hit home for both of us.

He of course reiterates the obvious; that Yellowstone has always had fire, will always have fire, and that the plateau has survived. In fact, fire is nature’s way of cleaning up after itself.

The narrative starts on June 30, 1988, when a number of fires were smoldering in the backcountry, and then follows the fire’s wrath day by day, accompanied by terrific maps that show the conflagration’s spread. There was the North Fork fire, the Mink, the Huck, and the Clover. Henry covers them all; how they started, how they grew, who was on the front lines, and how the flames were finally controlled by thousands of firefighters, and lots of ground and aerial machinery, and the weather.

The Best Of Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone National Park, at 2.2 million acres, is a huge, sprawling expanse of wilderness and wonders. If you're making a once-in-a-lifetime visit there, where do you start?

I've been making almost annual treks to the park for 20 years, and it seems there's always some new wonder I'm discovering. Now Alan Leftridge has come out with a book to help us all get the best of Yellowstone. In the book of that title, Mr. Leftridge, a former naturalist in Yellowstone, lays out chapter after chapter of "bests," from Best Geysers and Best Mudpots to Best Places to Fish and even Best Things to Do on a Rainy (or Snowy) Day.

Of course, "best of" books also are a good source for debates, as folks will quibble over whether the author's lists truly represent the best of this or that. It's all subjective. That said, the contents of The Best Of Yellowstone National Park will provide you with many starting points for planning your park vacation.

The Young Explorer's Guide To Yellowstone National Park

Can you imagine a place where hot water flows into ice-cold rivers, where fountains of boiling water shoot hundreds of feet into the sky, and where mountains are made of glass and trees are made of stone? A place where winter snows can pile up 6 feet deep, and where bears and wolves roam the landscape as they did in the 18th century long before the West was settled?

This magical place is called Yellowstone National Park, and it’s where the world’s national park movement — a movement to protect special and beautiful landscapes and all the creatures that call them homev — was launched.

The Young Explorer's Guide to Yellowstone National Park ($2.99) can help youngsters gain insights to, and appreciation for, the world's very first national park. Written by the editors of National Parks Traveler, this full-color, 58-page eBook covers park history, geology, thermal features, wildlife, landscape, and vegetation.