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Book Review Title

Guide to the National Parks: Alaska by National Geographic Who must have this book: Anyone planning an Alaskan trip based around visiting National Parks. Who should have this book: Anyone looking for a good overall guide to Alaskan hiking, camping, and visiting guide. ISBN: ISBNReplace

When you pick up a guidebook produced by the National Geographic Society, you have quite a few expectations, great design, beautiful illustrations, great maps, and informative content. This book delivers on all of those expectations in a beautiful guide to the states National Parks and more. Just like their flagship magazine, this book is beautiful when you flip through it. It has eye-catching photos, very informative maps and great layout.

I did have one small problem when I started reading it though. I was expecting in-depth coverage of the individual National Parks. After reading the first chapter on Denali, I realized that rather than restricting themselves to covering the parks, they have attempted to cover everything. For example, the Denali chapter is 42 pages long. Twelve of those pages are dedicated to visiting the park, and three of those pages include two full pages of maps and a full page image to start the chapter. The remaining 30 pages were in the part dedicated to excursions from Denali National Park. This covered everything from Fairbanks to Yukon-Charley National Preserve. The nine pages devoted to the park itself were good, but not much more than the basic visitor information.

I can’t condemn the book for straying from National Parks to cover everything near the parks, but you should make sure that this is what you are looking for. This would be a great book for someone trying to work out a multi-day itinerary and wants to see what areas can be lumped together easily. Also, it is a good general reference for the entire state and would be a great gift for any Alaska lover, but it is not a deep reference to the National Parks themselves.

Overview

This book covers the eight National Parks of Alaska which include, Denali, Gates of the Arctic, Glacier Bay, Katmai, Kenai Fjords, Kobuk Valley, Lake Clark, and Wrangell-St Elias. This is a lot to cover in 254, especially when you are trying to cover everything in between also.

Coverage of each National Park begins with an opening full page image, and intro page and then a two page spread map. The maps are great – exactly what you would expect form NG. The introductory section includes information on getting to the park, when to visit the park, and how to visit the park. This is followed my a section of “Exploring the Park,” then a few pages of basic information and activities.

After this handful of pages about each park, the same or many more pages are dedicated to the areas around the park. These pages cover many other destinations, but none in very much depth.

Editors

National Geographic is internationally known for the quality and aesthetics of their publications. They have several books about Alaska and the outdoors.