The Western landscape is in flux. Populations are swelling, sprawl is expanding population centers, water is becoming more precious as a result of drought and diversions, land-management philosophies and practices are generating political frictions. In her latest book, Sara Dant brings perspective to these changes by examining the factors that precipitated them.

No one knows more about the history of wildland fire in the United States than Stephen Pyne, a prodigious scholar, prolific writer, and former wildland firefighter who spent 15 years on the ground with the North Rim Hotshots. His encyclopedic knowledge and personal experience of wildland fire are exceptional credentials for writing this book, which traces the history of wildfire in America over the past half century.

There are literally hundreds of books on Yosemite National Park, including the iconic Ansel Adams black and white homage and John Muir’s The Yosemite, and it’s no wonder: it’s 1,200 square miles of mountains and canyons and valleys like nowhere else on Earth, and means so much to so many. And here is another must-have for your library, a rare combination of beautiful images coupled with heartfelt words by two masters of their crafts.

Roaming the gift shop in Yellowstone National Park in search of a book to fill any idle hours I might encounter after the sun went down, I spied a paperback edition of Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods, and figured that now, almost two decades after it came out, was as good a time as any to add his Appalachian Trail odyssey to my library. I wasn't disappointed.

One reviewer described this book, as, “…why and how we have sanctified these high-altitude mountains.” However O. Alan Weltzien’s fine effort also casts some wonderful light on aspects of the national parks and National Park Service that are very pertinent to this, the Park Service’s centennial year.

Kim Heacox has a long history with Denali National Park, beginning in 1981 when he was a rookie interpretive ranger. Rhythm of the Wild is a memoir, describing how Denali National Park has influenced him over three decades during which he experienced the park as a ranger, as a visitor, and as a writer-in-residence.

A few years back, Editor Kurt Repanshek and I had an opportunity to tag along on a research boat headed across Yellowstone Lake. I remember it vividly, because on the way back an afternoon mountain storm whipped up some foamy whitecaps and our boat started to look pretty small for such a big lake (it covers 136 square miles, at an altitude of 7,700 feet).

Coyotes are everywhere in the continental United States despite nearly a century and half of determined efforts to destroy them. The more concerted the effort to trap, shoot, and poison them, the greater their range and their numbers. Next to the wolf, environmental historian Dan Flores writes, the coyote has been and is the most hated, persecuted, and misunderstood member of America’s wildlife community. It has not always been so.

One of my favorite spots in California, just a few miles away from the congestion of the Mariposa Grove in Yosemite National Park, is a little known forest glen: Nelder Grove. A century ago this was a logging site, formerly named Fresno Grove, where the towering Sequoias crashed to the ground, to be cut up for grape stakes and fence posts. Massive stumps dot the quiet, verdant hillside, and some giants yet still stand. I always asked myself why, and how, this grove fell, while others went untouched, and were protected.

Anyone who has heard Terry Tempest Williams speak or who has read her writing knows how personal her approach is to her subject, thus the “personal topography” of the subtitle of this book. Visits to 12 units of the National Park System, including seven national parks, two national monuments, a national military park, national seashore, and national recreation area, provide grist for her exploration of this topography and a sampling of different elements of the system.

There are more than a few new books out this year 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."