Want to flee the country, or at least flee to the countryside? One need travel only as far as the coffee table with Treasured Lands: A Photographic Odyssey Through America's National Parks by QT Luong, a vast and verdant journey across all 62 national parks--from Gates of the Arctic in northern Alaska to Dry Tortugas in the westernmost Florida Keys. First published in 2016 by Cameron + Company, Treasured Lands features more than 600 of Luong's large-format landscape photographs, 60-plus maps and details on where and when to re-create Luong's gorgeous views. Luong is the only photographer known to have visited every single national park and was the only living artist featured in Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan's 2009 miniseries The National Parks: America's Best Idea.
In 2016, Treasured Lands won the Independent Publisher "IPPY" Award for Best Coffee-Table Book, IBPA's Benjamin Franklin Award for Best Arts/Photography Book and the National Indie Excellence Awards for Best Photography Book. In August 2020, an expanded second edition was published by Terra Galleria Press ($65), which revises multiple maps and adds national parks not yet designated in 2016. Luong's 300 excursions across a quarter century are a remarkable gift to nature lovers. --Tobias Mutter
