SEE THE U.S.A.

The stunning expanses of Ken Burns and Dayton Donald’s newest PBS documentary (DVD, $99.99) are laid out in the program’s companion volume. The National Parks: America’s Best Idea (Knopf, $50) is an oversize book teeming with history, documentary photographs, articles, quotations, and Donald’s film images. Its meandering content captures each of the nation’s national parks, along with the ideals and individuals who created the system and have characterized it through the years. You’ll learn of Virginia McClung and the renegade women’s circle who squabbled with the government over Mesa Verde; the disappearance of Bessie and Glen Hyde, honeymooners who vanished on their obstinate way through the Grand Canyon “in a flat-bottomed boat” in 1929; and the alarming corruption involved in the first stages of park tourism. This book is a breathtaking platform from which to survey questions of American identity and space. Lila Stiff