Ethan Carr's Latest Publication Makes Smithsonian Scholars' Favorite Books of 2019 List

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Landscape architecture professor Ethan Carr's latest publication, “The Greatest Beach: A History of the Cape Cod National Seashore,” was recently selected as one of the Smithsonian Scholars' Favorite Books of 2019.

The book explores the history and national implications of the Cape Cod National Seashore becoming a national park.

The book was selected by Julia Blakely, rare book catalog librarian at Smithsonian Libraries, for the list. 

Blakely writes, “Ethan Carr’s ‘The Greatest Beach’ is a fascinating layered history of the cultural landscape. The book provides a detailed examination, expertly researched, of the planning and design of a national park that needed to balance strongly competing interests, hopes and fears in a long-inhabited and storied place. Facing failure several times, the struggle led to what became known as ‘The Cape Cod Model,’ establishing a new type of national park for the United States. The Greatest Beach is an important and poignant reminder for our troubled times and how America’s past genius for compromise can create ground-shifting and Earth-saving federal legislation.”