Book excerpt: Richard Grusin's innovative study investigates how the establishment of national parks participated in the production of American national identity after the Civil War. The creation of America's national parks is usually seen as an uncomplicated act of environmental preservation. Grusin argues, instead, that parks must be understood as complex cultural technologies for the reproduction of nature as landscape art. He explores the origins of America's three major parks - Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Grand Canyon--in relation to other forms of landscape representation including photography, mapping, travel writing and fiction.