Tracing the history of landscape park design from British gardens up through the city park designs of Frederick Law Olmsted, Ethan Carr places national park landscape architecture within a larger historical context. Despite the difficulties now confronting the parks, their continued ability to attract millions of visitors suggests that their creators succeeded in presenting a captivating vision of a once-wild America.
Ethan Carr is a landscape architect and is currently working for the National Park Service. He has taught landscape architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and the University of Virginia School of Architecture.