The pantheon of conservation leaders through American history is familiar; John Muir, Gifford Pinchot, Aldo Leopold, Bob Marshall, and David Brower most prominent. George Bird Grinnell deserves to be among them, but his name and his contributions are not as well known or appreciated. John Taliaferro has written the first comprehensive biography of Grinnell, which is a step toward recognizing the scope and significance of his long career.

An estimated six million people visit the Grand Canyon annually. Most visitors look in from the South Rim or through the window of a helicopter, and roughly 26,000 float the Colorado River through all or part of the canyon. Very few in the recorded history of Grand Canyon exploration have walked its length (fewer than have walked on the moon, Kevin Fedarko tells photographer Pete McBride). Likely no one with the photographic skills of National Geographic photographer McBride have made this arduous journey, which covered 750 miles from Lees Ferry to the Grand Wash Cliffs at the canyon’s western end.

What do you envision when you enter a national park? What do you expect to experience? Why do we visit these places?

We all know what incredible cauldrons of beauty and history national parks hold for visitors to marvel at. You can view them as libraries of natural and cultural history. And like most libraries, you can get lost in the stacks if you don’t have a guide. Stephen Trimble has put together the guide you need to more fully appreciate Capitol Reef National Park in Utah. It’s not your typical national park guidebook. No trail, dining, or lodging information.

Any visitor to Yosemite inescapably encounters granite – it is the essence of the park. Few if any know granite like Michael P. Cohen, who has climbed big walls, wandered on and around its less than vertical presences, read deeply into its geomorphology and mineralogy, and intimately explored and reflected on the nature of Yosemite granite for over a half century. Granite and Grace is a meditation on what he has come to know of it in all these ways and years.

Redwood National and State Parks is not your typical national park. That's quite evident from its name. But when you look at a map of the park located in northern California, it becomes more clear. This is a narrow park that roams and meanders along the Pacific Coast, interspersing national and state parklands. And you need to know that if you're planning to do some hiking there. That's why you'll find the full-page map in John Soares' upcoming book on hiking this park so helpful.

A new book on the Green River examines the demands on that iconic stream that flows out of central Wyoming and adds its fill to the Colorado down in Canyonlands National Park. The text is a wonderful complement to the more lyrical book on the same river that arrived more than half-a-century ago.

It's time to move on to Molly Hashimoto's next course for mastering your sketching, painting, and drawing of birds you can spot in national parks in the West.

If you savor American history, particularly the years of the Civil War, can you ever have enough books to help understand what transpired during those bloody years? In Civil War Places, Seeing the Conflict through the Eyes of its Leading Historians, a roster of historians who studied the war offer a rich collection of essays to lend some perspective to individual battles.

A life that ultimately led to a new career as a national park ranger.

Many national park enthusiasts can recite the history of the system or their favorite site by memory. They laud the conservationists and leaders who knew we must protect precious natural landscapes for future generations, they know the first national park (Yellowstone), and the year the National Park Service was founded (1916). But how many know of the contributions of people of color to our national parks?

This book is an atlas unlike any that I have seen. Its focus is not on a national park but on the state of Wyoming in which two national parks, Grand Teton and Yellowstone, are very much at the core of migrations of elk, bison, and mule deer. Many migrations in the state do not touch on these national parks, but the point of the book is that migratory ungulate populations, once nearly eradicated by overhunting and other factors, are mostly on the rebound.

This book, in honor of the centennial of the Save the Redwoods League, is a love story regaling the country’s tallest trees, the coastal redwoods and the giant sequoias farther inland.

Five years ago I visited for the first time the “Puebloan Heartland,” defined in this book as the area between Mesa Verde to the north and Chaco Canyon to the south. I knew of Mesa Verde National Park and Chaco Canyon National Historical Park but was unaware that these famous Ancestral Puebloan places bounded other sites of archaeological significance. My wife suggested we visit Aztec National Monument, which puzzled me. What were the Aztecs doing way up here in northern New Mexico? Aztec turned out to be a remarkable site, and I knew I had a lot to learn.

Bison, wolves, grizzly bears, and elk are all categorized as “charismatic megafauna.” These are animals that have popular appeal to many and are often used as symbols of wildness. Not so often mentioned under this category is the mountain lion, also known as the puma, the panther, and the cougar. And while these big cats often fly under the proverbial radar of wildlife advocates, not only are they out there, but their range is expanding and they’re showing up in some previously unlikely places.