Hans Huth was for many years Curator of Decorative Arts at the Art Institute of Chicago and a consultant for the U.S. National Park Service. For this new Bison Book edition, Douglas H. Strong has written an introduction discussing recent developments in the environmental movement and the contribution of Nature and the American to the burgeoning crusade for nature. Douglas H. Strong is a professor of history at San Diego State University and the author of Dreamers and Defenders: American Conservationists (1988), also published by the University of Nebraska Press.

We have come to love the West too much, and Lake Tahoe is a preeminent example of the cost of our endearment. The region annually attracts millions of visitors, more than any other scenic area of similar size in the United States. Runaway development to accommodate crowds has resulted in an alarming rate of environmental deterioration. Yet unprecedented recent efforts to protect the long-term ecological health of Tahoe provide hope for the future. Douglas H. Strong tells the environmental story of the Tahoe Basin from its use by the indigenous Washoe to the present. To whom does Tahoe belong...