Books by Dayton Duncan
The National Parks: America's Best Idea
The companion volume to the twelve-hour PBS series from the acclaimed filmmaker behind The Civil War, Baseball, and The War.
America’s national parks spring from an idea as radical as the Declaration of Independence: that the nation’s most magnificent and sacred places should be preserved, not for royalty or the rich, but for everyone. In this evocative and lavishly illustrated narrative, Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan delve into the history of the park idea, from the first sighting by white men in 1851 of the valley that would become Yosemite and the creation of the world’s first national park at Yellowstone in 1872, through the most recentadditions to a system that now encompasses nearly four hundred sites and 84 million acres.
The authors recount the adventures, mythmaking, and intense political battles behind the evolution of the park system, and the enduringideals that fostered its growth. They capture the importance and splendors of the individual parks: from Haleakala in Hawaii to Acadia in Maine, from Denali in Alaska to the Everglades in Florida, from Glacier in Montana to Big Bend in Texas. And they introduce us to a diverse cast of compelling characters—both unsung heroes and famous figures such as John Muir, Theodore Roosevelt, and Ansel Adams—who have been transformed by these special places and committed themselves to saving them from destruction so that the rest of us could be transformed as well.
The National Parks is a glorious celebration of an essential expression of American democracy.
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The National Parks: America's Best Idea
Based on a masterful PBS series from one of our most treasured filmmakers—a glorious, lavishly illustrated account of the adventures, mythmaking, and intense political battles that led to an essential expression of American democracy.
“Beautiful and erudite…[and] how Americans learned (or failed to learn) proper stewardship of nature.” —The Washington Post
America’s national parks spring from an idea as radical as the Declaration of Independence: that the nation’s most magnificent and sacred places should be preserved, not for royalty or the rich, but for everyone. In this evocative and lavishly illustrated narrative, Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan delve into the history of the park idea, from the first sighting by white men in 1851 of the valley that would become Yosemite and the creation of the world’s first national park at Yellowstone in 1872, through the most recent additions to a system that now encompasses nearly four hundred sites and 84 million acres.
The authors recount the evolution of the park system, and the enduring ideals that fostered its growth. They capture the importance and splendors of the individual parks: from Haleakala in Hawaii to Acadia in Maine, from Denali in Alaska to the Everglades in Florida, from Glacier in Montana to Big Bend in Texas. And they introduce us to a diverse cast of compelling characters—both unsung heroes and famous figures such as John Muir, Theodore Roosevelt, and Ansel Adams—who have been transformed by these special places and committed themselves to saving them from destruction so that the rest of us could be transformed as well.
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Horatios Drive By Duncan, Dayton/ Burns, Ken
The companion volume to the PBS documentary film about the first—and perhaps most astonishing—automobile trip across the United States.
In 1903 there were only 150 miles of paved roads in the entire nation and most people had never seen a “horseless buggy”—but that did not stop Horatio Nelson Jackson, a thirty-one-year-old Vermont doctor, who impulsively bet fifty dollars that he could drive his 20-horsepower automobile from San Francisco to New York City. Here—in Jackson’s own words and photographs—is a glorious account of that months-long, problem-beset, thrilling-to-the-rattled-bones trip with his mechanic, Sewall Crocker, and a bulldog named Bud. Jackson’s previously unpublished letters to his wife, brimming with optimism against all odds, describe in vivid detail every detour, every flat tire, every adventure good and bad. And his nearly one hundred photographs show a country still settled mainly in small towns, where life moved no faster than the horse-drawn carriage and where the arrival of Jackson’s open-air (roofless and windowless) Winton would cause delirious excitement.
Jackson was possessed of a deep thirst for adventure, and his remarkable story chronicles the very beginning of the restless road trips that soon became a way of life in America. Horatio’s Drive is the first chapter in our nation’s great romance with the road.
With 146 illustrations and 1 map
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Country Music: An Illustrated History
A gorgeously illustrated and hugely entertaining story of America's most popular music and the singers and songwriters who captivated, entertained, and consoled listeners throughout the twentieth century—based on the eight-part film series.
This fascinating history begins where country music itself emerged: the American South, where people sang to themselves and to their families at home and in church, and where they danced to fiddle tunes on Saturday nights. With the birth of radio in the 1920s, the songs moved from small towns, mountain hollers, and the wide-open West to become the music of an entire nation--a diverse range of sounds and styles from honky tonk to gospel to bluegrass to rockabilly, leading up through the decades to the music's massive commercial success today.
But above all, Country Music is the story of the musicians. Here is Hank Williams's tragic honky tonk life, Dolly Parton rising to fame from a dirt-poor childhood, and Loretta Lynn turning her experiences into songs that spoke to women everywhere. Here too are interviews with the genre's biggest stars, including the likes of Merle Haggard to Garth Brooks to Rosanne Cash. Rife with rare photographs and endlessly fascinating anecdotes, the stories in this sweeping yet intimate history will captivate longtime country fans and introduce new listeners to an extraordinary body of music that lies at the very center of the American experience.
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Blood Memory: The Tragic Decline and Improbable Resurrection of the American Buffalo
The epic story of the buffalo in America, from prehistoric times to today—a moving and beautifully illustrated work of natural history inspired by the PBS series "American Buffalo"
The American buffalo—our nation’s official mammal—is an improbable, shaggy beast that has found itself at the center of many of our most mythic and sometimes heartbreaking tales. The largest land animals in the Western Hemisphere, they are survivors of a mass extinction that erased ancient species that were even larger. For nearly 10,000 years, they evolved alongside Native people who weaved them into every aspect of daily life; relied on them for food, clothing, and shelter; and revered them as equals.
Newcomers to the continent found the buffalo fascinating at first, but in time they came to consider them a hindrance to a young nation’s expansion. And in the space of only a decade, they were slaughtered by the millions for their hides, with their carcasses left to rot on the prairies. Then, teetering on the brink of disappearing from the face of the earth, they would be rescued by a motley collection of Americans, each of them driven by different—and sometimes competing—impulses. This is the rich and complicated story of a young republic's heedless rush to conquer a continent, but also of the dawn of the conservation era—a story of America at its very best and worst.
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$40.00
The Dust Bowl: An Illustrated History
In this riveting chronicle, which accompanies a documentary to be broadcast on PBS in the fall, Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns capture the profound drama of the American Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Terrifying photographs of mile-high dust storms, along with firsthand accounts by more than two dozen eyewitnesses, bring to life this heart-wrenching catastrophe, when a combination of drought, wind, and poor farming practices turned millions of acres of the Great Plains into a wasteland, killing crops and livestock, threatening the lives of small children, burying homesteaders' hopes under huge dunes of dirt. Burns and Duncan collected more than 300 mesmerizing photographs, some never before published, scoured private letters, government reports, and newspaper articles, and conducted in-depth interviews to produce a document that may likely be the last recorded testimony of the generation who lived through this defining decade.
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Treasured Lands: A Photographic Odyssey Through America's National Parks, Second Expanded Edition
Give the gift of the National Parks with this beautiful coffee table book: the most complete photography book about the 62 US National Parks, and the only one with location notes for each photograph. Winner of 12 national and international book awards.
QT Luong has updated and expanded his national parks book by adding 28 more pages, 32 new locations, and revising all the maps. Treasured Lands: A Photographic Odyssey Through America's National Parks pays tribute to the millions of acres of protected wilderness and historical heritage in our country's 62 national parks, including the three designated since the award-winning first edition was published in 2016 and became an instant classic - Gateway Arch, Indiana Dunes, White Sands.
Luong, who is featured in Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan's documentary The National Parks: America's Best Idea, is the most prolific photographer working in the national parks and the only one to have made large-format photographs in each of them. In an odyssey that spanned more than a quarter-century and 300 visits, Luong focused his lenses on iconic landscapes and rarely seen remote views, presenting his journey in this sumptuous array of more than 600 breathtaking images.
Accompanying the collection of scenic masterpieces is a guide that includes maps of each park, as well as extended captions that detail where and how the photographs were made. Designed to inspire visitors to connect with the parks and invite photographers to re-create these landscapes, the guide also provides anecdotal observations that give context to the pictures and convey the sheer scope of Luong's extraordinary odyssey.
Including a foreword by author and documentary filmmaker Dayton Duncan, Treasured Lands is a rich visual tour of the U.S. National Parks and an invaluable guide from a photographer who hiked-or paddled, dived, skied, snowshoed, and climbed-each park, shooting in all kinds of terrain, in all seasons, and at all times of day. QT Luong's timeless gallery of the nation's most revered landscapes beckons to nature lovers, armchair travelers, and photography enthusiasts alike, keeping America's natural wonders within reach.
Includes 62 national parks: Acadia National Park, Arches National Park, Badlands National Park, Big Bend National Park, Biscayne National Park, Black Canyon Of The Gunnison National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, Canyonlands National Park, Capitol Reef National Park, Carlsbad Caverns National Park, Channel Islands National Park, Congaree National Park, Crater Lake National Park, Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Death Valley National Park, Denali National Park, Dry Tortugas National Park, Everglades National Park, Gates of the Arctic National Park, Gateway Arch National Park, Glacier National Park, Glacier Bay National Park, Grand Canyon National Park, Grand Teton National Park, Great Basin National Park, Great Sand Dunes National Park, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Haleakala National Park, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, Hot Springs National Park, Indiana Dunes National Park, Isle Royale National Park, Joshua Tree National Park, Katmai National Park, Kenai Fjords National Park, Kings Canyon National Park, Kobuk Valley National Park, Lake Clark National Park, Lassen Volcanic National Park, Mammoth Cave National Park, Mesa Verde National Park, Mount Rainier National Park, National Park of American Samoa, North Cascades National Park, Olympic National Park, Petrified Forest National Park, Redwood National Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, Saguaro National Park, Sequoia National Park, Shenandoah National Park, Theodore Roosevelt National Park, Virgin Islands National Park, Voyageurs National Park, White Sands National Park, Wind Cave National Park, Wrangell - St Elias National Park, Yellowstone National Park, Yosemite National Park, Zion National Park.
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Treasured Lands A Photographic Odyssey Through America's National Parks, Third Expanded Edition
"QT Luong has updated and expanded his national parks book by adding 28 more pages, 32 new locations, and revising all the maps. Treasured Lands: A Photographic Odyssey Through America's National Parks pays tribute to the millions of acres of protected wilderness and historical heritage in all our country's 62 national parks, including the three designated since the award-winning first edition was published in 2016 and became an instant classic. Luong, who is featured in Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan's documentary The National Parks: America's Best Idea, is the most prolific and versatile photographer working in the national parks today and the only one to have made large-format photographs in each of America's 62 parks. In an odyssey that spanned more than a quarter century and 300 visits, Luong ventured through each park with cameras at the ready, capturing the majesty and unique beauty of the nation's preserved habitats. From canyons and deserts to glaciers and reefs, the photographer focused his lenses on spectacular iconic landscapes and rarely seen remote spots, presenting his journey in this sumptuous gallery of more than 600 breathtaking images that are so sharp and have so much detail, they are the next best thing to being there. Accompanying this collection of scenic masterpieces is a comprehensive guide that includes a map for each park that indicates where the images were shot, as well as extended captions that detail the images' orientations and lighting, along with pertinent facts on the parks' geography and natural history. Designed to inspire outdoor adventurers to visit the parks and invite photographers to re-create these landscapes through their own lenses, the guide also provides anecdotal observations that give context to the pictures and convey the sheer scope of Luong's extraordinary odyssey. Including an introduction by award-winning author and documentary filmmaker Dayton Duncan, Treasured Lands is a rich visual tour of the US National Parks and an invaluable guide from a photographer who hiked (and sometimes paddled, dived, skied, snowshoed, or climbed) each park, shooting in all kinds of terrain, through all seasons, and at all times of day and night. QT Luong's timeless gallery of the nation's most revered landscapes beckons to nature lovers, armchair travelers, and photography enthusiasts alike, keeping America's natural wonders ever within reach."--Publisher's website.
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