Interpreting Our Heritage: Fourth Edition, Expanded and Updated

Freeman Tilden

Feb 2021 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Adam Barr

About this audiobook

Every year millions of Americans visit national parks and monuments, state and municipal parks, battlefields, historic houses, and museums. By means of guided walks and talks, tours, exhibits, and signs, visitors experience these areas through a very special kind of communication technique known as "interpretation." For fifty years, Freeman Tilden's Interpreting Our Heritage has been an indispensable sourcebook for those who are responsible for developing and delivering interpretive programs. This expanded and revised anniversary edition includes not only Tilden's classic work but also five additional essays by Tilden on the art and craft of interpretation, a new foreword by former National Park Service director Russell Dickenson, and an introduction by R. Bruce Craig that puts Tilden's writings into perspective for present and future generations. Whether the challenge is to make a prehistoric site come to life; to explain the geological basis behind a particular rock formation; to touch the hearts and minds of visitors to battlefields, historic homes, and sites; or to teach a child about the wonders of the natural world, Tilden's book, with its explanation of the famed "six principles" of interpretation, provides a guiding hand.

About the author

Freeman Tilden (1883-1980) was a pioneer in the field of natural and cultural interpretation. A former journalist, playwright, and novelist, he began writing about America's national parks in the 1940s. Interpreting Our Heritage remains the most influential.

Adam Barr, a recovering lawyer, former golf industry executive, former singing telegram messenger, and former print and television reporter, now bends the energy of all those "formers" toward his passion for acting and singing. He lives near New York City with his family.

R. Bruce Craig is an independent historian and biographer. He is the editor of the fiftieth anniversary edition of Freeman Tilden's classic work, Interpreting Our Heritage, and author of Treasonable Doubt: The Harry Dexter White Spy Case and The Apprenticeship of Alger Hiss.