Exhaustive guide is absolutely essential

This is as good as a comprehensive guide to a national park could be. It truly has everything. There are hundreds of beautiful color photographs, excellent maps, detailed descriptions of all of the park’s ecological, geological, historical, and cultural features, all held together by an erudite and concise narrative that has been refined over six editions. It really is excellent.

Those of you familiar with other mainstream travel guide brands are going to notice something different about this book: The emphasis is on the park itself not on the infrastructure that feeds the park. There are beautiful write-ups on all of the geophysical features of the park, but not so much on the hotels and restaurants in Jackson or Bozeman. That said, everything within the park’s boundaries is thoroughly covered, including its various and lovely “villages.” There are truly excellent sections and sidebars dedicated to the science behind so many of the things you will see, and the book does an excellent job sorting and indexing all the sites by every imaginable criteria.

This book is really like having your own dedicated National Park Ranger as a tour guide. It’s that good.

The book does include Grand Teton National Park too, just not at the same level of detail as Yellowstone.

If you’re interested in Yellowstone and you find yourself here, by all means buy this book.