Yesterday I finished The State Park Movement in America: A Critical Review. It's published by a university press and reads like a scholarly work. The author was the director of the Florida Parks Service for two decades, not a professor. The inconsistent and erratic way state parks were created, state park services established, and how they are operated and managed since WW2 is fascinating, if kind of appalling. Even their mission statements are all over the place. At least one state had their parks managed under their Department of Transportation rather than some of Department of Natural Resources. The first half the book, up through WW2, is the most interesting. After that the book gets very general and broad, which makes the reading a bit dull. It also feels kind of underwhelming because all the efforts over the years to try to achieve some degree of consistency, standards, and nationwide coordination just never really get anywhere. Some might find it down right depressing, although I've visited enough state parks to say they're often successful in spite of all that.
Not an exciting reading or a light read, but kind of fascinating if the subject intrigues you.
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