That Wild Country

Mark Kenyon wrote That Wild Country as both a history and a personal travelogue. He spent a year visiting public lands across the American West, from national parks to Bureau of Land Management acreage to the kind of obscure wildlife refuges that don’t make any list.

The history sections trace how American public lands came to exist in the first place, why the system looks the way it does, and the recurring fights over who controls them.

Kenyon writes plainly. He’s a hunter and angler with a strong conservation streak, and the book sits at the intersection of those interests. He’s not on either coast of the political fight, which gives him room to talk to ranchers, environmentalists, and federal employees on something like equal terms.

For anyone who has spent time on western public land or wants to understand why those landscapes are politically charged, this is a useful one-volume primer.