Death in Yellowstone is an amazing book that documents most of the deaths that have occured in the park since its beginning. The book is divided into two parts: death by nature and death by man. As an employee of the Old Faithful Inn this past summer, I recommend this book for anyone who has visited the park or is going to do so in the future. The stories are both educating and frightening at the same time but offer valuable lessons about traveling in the park. It is amazing to me how some people could even think of walking around the thermal pools at night, go camping alone, try to tame bears or get too close to the canyon's edge!

At first glance, it sounds like a morbid book. Two hundred seventy six pages about people who have died in various ways in Yellowstone National Park. In reality, it is a fascinating book with an underlying message of safety and caution in National Parks. You might expect a book which is written by an historian to have an academic tone and be full of footnotes and an extensive bibliography. "Death in Yellowstone" by Yellowstone National Park Historian, Lee H. Whittlesey, does have the footnotes and bibliography. It also reads like a Stephen King novel, drawing the reader to the next page. Whittlesey even used a King technique of quoting song lyrics or some other source to introduce his chapters. Even many of the footnotes and bibliography entries are annotated with additional, interesting information.

The book's subtitle, "Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park", sets the tone. Nearly every chronicled death in the book really is due to carelessness on the part of the deceased; or on the part of someone else.

The historian's perspective gives Whittlesey the opportunity to dig into the archives of Yellowstone as well as newspaper accounts in cities in the area taking him (and the readers) back to the 1800's and the park's earliest deaths. For recent events he often spoke with "primary sources", witnesses and family members.

Each of the 25 chapters takes the reader to a different and bizarre way that death has occurred in Yellowstone National Park. The chapter titles, themselves, often give a light hearted and much needed break from the serious nature of the overall work. Chapter titles include: "I Think I Shall Never See --Yellowstone's Deaths from Falling Trees"; "Malice in Wonderland --Yellowstone Murders"; and "The Gloom of Earthquakes --Shaky Breaky Park".

The opening chapter deals with deaths by falling (or jumping) into hot springs and geysers. The first incident in the book sets the tone and the overall theme....."Don't do stupid things in Yellowstone". It is the 1981 account of David Allen Kirwan, who dove head first into the 202 degree water of Celestine Pool of the Lower Geyser Basin to save a friend's dog that had also jumped into the boiling water <---YOU DID read that correctly --a witness described Kirwan's dive as a flying, swimming pool type dive. Among his final words after his friends were able to pull him from the water....."That was a stupid thing I did".

In most instances, it was s "stupid thing" that caused a death in Yellowstone. Usually, it was because a visitor did not heed a warning, or made a conscious decision to ignore the warning. In "Death in Yellowstone", Whittlesey repeats those warnings...over and over again. He also explains in fairly graphic terms the consequences of ignoring them.

"Death in Yellowstone" may save lives. There are few history books, so entertaining and so engrossing that can claim that.

The Wyoming Companion

I purchased this book out of curiousity after our trip there and was amazed, dumbfounded, and shocked. It is a bit morbid, but also an eye opener. Yellowstone is a very wonderful place, but this book really gives the details on just how dangerous it is as well. It opened my eyes to things I never imagined and of course I uttered the words,"how stupid" a lot.

This book gave me chills and a new found respect for such a beautiful place. I thought I had respect for the park and all that is in it before, until I read this book. Now I see it differently with a lot more respect. As stated above in another review, where the guy jumps in after his friend's dog, into a hot springs, grabs hold of you and makes you shake your head, thinking, "How stupid!". From there you can't help but keep reading to find out what happens next. One part that got me was the chapter about the bears. There is a story about a lady and her dog and a forest ranger. There was a bear not far from where they were and the lady wanted to let her dog run loose for awhile and the park ranger adviced her not to, she of course didn't listen and the little dog went straight for the bear and I am sure you can guess what happened next. I sat there dumbfounded and thought, "Geez lady it's not like the forest ranger has no clue what he is talking about. They are there for a reason and listening would have been a good idea." There are many more storie like that and then some.

This is a well laid out book, with a lot of historical facts and references. Mr. Whittlesey put a lot of work behind it and this sounds strange to say, considering how bone chilling this book is, it is a good thing he took the time to write it. This makes you stop and think about the world around you and about the people in it. In three words: Don't be stupid!

Really disappointed. We purchased this book for use within our Big Five consulting team. For some reason, we never really used it. When I left to work for a smaller strategy consulting firm, I soon found out why. The book is geared exclusively for software and IT proposals. It is so specific that very little transfers to other uses. Also -- and this is a big negative as far as I'm concerned -- there is very little discussion on the importance of stressing client benefits over product attributes. In fact, the book spends most of its time discussing how to communicate product specifications and implementation processes. Understand, buyers purchase your products and services because they benefit the buyer. Not because they are thrilled with your "gee-whiz" and "whiz-bang" product attributes. They want to know how much will this service save me? how much more profit will I earn? Your proposal is a marketing tool. It must clearly underscore the benefits your customer will derive from the purchase of your product or service over other alternatives. However, you never would have known of the importance of writing the proposal from the client's view after having read this disappointing book.

The purpose of this book is to provide you with a practical guide to writing and organizing sales proposals - with emphasis on "practical". Instead of discussing salesmanship 101, sales theories, and proposal war stories, this book focuses on developing the materials and a process for writing winning proposals.

This book is useful not only as a writing guide, but as a proposal resource to show management how professional proposals are resourced, managed, and written. These ideas and others are explored in this new edition.