Sarah Mittlefehldt

I like this book a lot, but can't seem to give it a high rating--mostly because the subject matter's pretty specialized. The book also starts slowly, then finds its feet somewhere in chapter 2.

As the subtitle says, this is a book about politics. Mostly it's about the politics of the trail, though it wanders into national environmental policy again and again. Mittlefehldt puts a lot of effort into describing the sort of coalition building it took to build and maintain the trail, with a heavy emphasis on how much those coalitions depended on local knowledge of both the physical environment and the political environment. There are many case studies, spread over both space and time, describing how specific issues were resolved. It's clear that the trail's geography required working with local landowners, local politicians, state governments, and (increasingly throughout the trail's history) the national government. Originally the trail's right-of-way issues were mostly resolved with handshake agreements with landowners, but these days the trail's mostly owned by the National Parks Service. Both ways of trail-building turn out to have both advantages and drawbacks. The changing national political environment required the Appalachian Trail Conference/Conservancy to adjust its structure from time to time; while it began and remains a coalition of local organizations, its dependence on Washington led to ever-increasing centralization of some features.

While the book mostly considers disagreements, the author points out from time to time that most issues were fairly easily resolved, often by moving the (prospective) trail to another landowner's property. Most of the trail's neighbors seem to have been generally supportive; even when there were disputes they were more often about the value of land than about the trail itself.

While this book began life as the author's doctoral dissertation, those roots mostly don't show. What does show is meticulous research; Mittlefehldt's endnotes are absolutely delightful. This is a fairly specialized study that won't appeal to a lot of readers, but for those of us interested in the topic it's wonderful.… (meer)