The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is one of America’s most beautiful and popular national parks. Located in the southern Appalachian Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina, it is home to more than 100,000 species of plants and animals.

The grandeur and sheer scale of the park has been captured in Donald W. Linzey’s A Natural History Guide to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which was already the most extensive volume available on the park’s natural history. In this second edition, Linzey updates the wildlife story of the park after the recent reintroduction of red wolves and new introduction of reptiles, amphibians, and arachnids to the bioregion, and discusses persisting habitat concerns related to aggressive, non-native species.

Written from the perspective of a naturalist who has spent over fifty years conducting research in the park, this volume not only discusses the park’s plant and animal life but also explores the impact that civilization has played in altering the area’s landscape.

Linzey draws from a deep reservoir of research, including the All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory, a concentrated effort to determine all species within a given area within a short time frame. His book provides a thorough overview of everything a visitor to the park would need to know, without complex jargon. Both casual readers and those more interested in the ecology of the Great Smoky Mountains will find this book an enlightening and educational guide.

Donald W. Linzey, a wildlife biologist and ecologist, is a faculty member in the Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. He is an authority on the mammals of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and its environs.