The National Parks: America's Best Idea is a 2009 documentary film for television, DVD and companion book (ISBN 978-0307268969) by director/producer Ken Burns and producer/writer Dayton Duncan which features the United States National Park system and traces the system's history.

It began to air September 27, 2009. The film was previewed in a seven-minute segment at the end of the fourth episode of Burns's 2007 PBS documentary, The War.

Dayton Duncan, writer and producer of The National Parks, is an award-winning author and documentary filmmaker. His nine other books include, with Ken Burns, Horatio’s Drive and Lewis & Clark. He has collaborated on all of Ken Burns’s films for twenty years as a writer, producer, and consultant. He lives in Walpole, New Hampshire.

PBS PREVIEWS: NATIONAL PARKS | Extended Preview | PBS

Buy DVD Ken Burns: National Parks - America's Best Idea

Disc 1: "The Making of The National Parks" (Includes Spanish Audio and Subtitles);

Disc 2: "Capturing the Parks" -A behind-the-scenes look at filming of The National Parks: America's Best Idea

Disc 3: Musical Journeys through the National Parks (National Parks Timeline, Peace at Last/ Across the Ocean, Horizons, Green Groves of Erin, The Shores of Ogygia, Teddy Bears' Picnic)

Disc 4: Outtakes (An Interview with Nevada Barr, author and former National Park Service ranger; and The Boss, the story of Frank Pinkley and Casa Grande. Narrated by Ken Burns);

Disc 5: The National Parks: This Is America (Mini Documentary, Includes Spanish Audio and Subtitles)

Disc 6: Contemporary Stories from America's National Parks (San Antonio Missions: Keeping History Alive, Yosemite's Buffalo Soldiers, Mount Rushmore: Telling America's Stories, Manzanar: "Never Again," City Kids in National Parks, Includes Spanish Audio and Subtitles).

Watch Videos: The National Parks: America's Best Idea

Browse the selection of video clips from the documentary, scenes that had to be cut, and untold stories of The National Parks.

Browse Inside the Book: The National Parks: America's Best Idea

Hardcover: 432 pages
Author: Dayton Duncan
Publisher: Knopf (September 8, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0307268969
ISBN-13: 978-0307268969

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 recent additions 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 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.

The National Parks is a glorious celebration of an essential expression of American democracy.

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