John H. Sprinkle’s Saving Spaces: Historic Land Conservation in the United States contributes to scholarship on historic preservation and land conservation. In so doing, it adds in a meaningful way to an on-going, interdisciplinary examination of both these topics. Beginning in the 1970s, a growing body of scholarship—combined with the “new” social history’s emphasis on the ordinary and everyday—drew increasing attention to the historical and cultural significance of rural, historic landscapes. That scholarship contributed to a transformation of the philosophy, and an expansion of the boundaries, of historic preservation to embrace those rural, historic landscapes. Robert Z. Melnick, a historic landscape architect, published under contract with the National Park Service (NPS) Cultural Landscapes: Rural Historic Districts in the National Park System (1984), a seminal work in bringing rural landscapes into the field of historic preservation.In 1989 (revised 1999), Melnick co-authored NPS’s Bulletin 30: Guidelines for Evaluation and Documenting Rural Historic Landscapes, which provided guidance for nominating rural, historic landscapes to the National Register of Historic Places. Bulletin 30 explained in its introduction that “in recent years, there has been a growing interest among preservationists in recognizing and protecting the cultural values that centuries of land use and occupation have embodied in rural America. Understanding the forces that have shaped rural properties, interpreting their historical importance, and planning for their protection are current challenges in historic preservation.” Publication of Bulletin 30 signaled that NPS had elevated the significance of rural, historic landscapes in its oversight and direction of historic preservation. NPS is among the most important federal agencies engaged in public history, and its highlighting rural, historic landscapes raised their importance in the teaching and practice of public history.Thanks to Melnick’s Cultural Landscapes and NPS’s Bulletin 30 (and subsequent publications), rural, historic landscapes were folded into the field of historic preservation, and the NPS assumed a leading, national role in identifying, evaluating, and nominating rural historic districts to the National Register of Historic Places. The inclusion of rural, historic landscapes in scholarly literature, technical publications of the NPS, and the creation of the National Register of Historic Places was part of a national trend in historic preservation away from high-style architecture and important people (largely white males) and toward a recognition of the significance of the ordinary and everyday buildings and landscapes of American life.Saving Spaces: Historic Land Conservation in the United States, adds to the body of literature on landscape preservation, as well as to what we know about the history of the conservation and environmental movements in this country. Both the conservation and historic preservation movements had their origins in the nineteenth century, expanding and gaining constituents between the last third of the nineteenth century and the middle of the twentieth. After WWII historic preservation enjoyed renewed growth and conservation was superseded by the ecology-based environmental movement. Conservation and the environmental movement and historic preservation had similar roots in a sense of loss and a growing interest in preserving remnants of the built and natural environments in the face of rapid and often destructive urban/industrial growth. Despite common roots, these movements related to the natural and built environments have largely been addressed by scholars and advocates as separate trends. One of the things that Sprinkle’s Saving Spaces does extremely well is to link these movements in terms of the common historic context out of which they emerged and flourished. As Sprinkle explains in the introduction, “the historic preservation and land conservation movements are inherently linked because of the underlying factor of land, and with it the fundamental role of private property within the American system” (1). Indeed, as Sprinkle so astutely notes, the powerful role of private property in the culture and society and economy of the United States is one of the distinguishing qualities of both the historic preservation and land conservation movements in this nation.There are several ways in which Saving Spaces stands out as a volume that should be informative and useful to students, teachers, and practitioners of public history, starting with the expertise of the author. In addition to Saving Spaces, Sprinkle is the author of Crafting Preservation Criteria: The National Register of Historic Places (Routledge, 2014). He worked for about ten years as a historic preservation consultant in the private sector and, since 1998, he has been employed by NPS, where he has gained considerable hands-on experience overseeing National Historic Landmark theme studies on the Civil Rights Movement and editing several National Historic Landmark nominations.The layout and organization of Saving Spaces makes it accessible to those who are interested in historic preservation and landscape history but may not be experts in either field. Chapter 1, “From Period Rooms to Large Landscapes,” offers an overview of historic preservation and landscape conservation from the early twentieth century through the late 1970s. It is followed by chapters that provide several useful and insightful case studies at the intersection between land conservation and historic preservation. Subsequent chapters highlight “Operation Overview,” an effort to conserve and preserve a viewshed along the Potomac River in the vicinity of Washington, DC, and Mount Vernon; the re-creation movement; and the thorny issue of conservation easements. The fact that Saving Spaces has thorough endnotes after each chapter and is grounded on a solid base of primary source research, including collections housed by the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, the Library of Congress, the National Archives, the National Park Service, and the Mount Vernon Ladies Association, enhances its authority and its value.On balance Saving Spaces is a very good book that is well written and adds to what we know in the fields of historic preservation and land conservation, with its most significant contribution being integration of these two fields. As a teacher of historic preservation, public history, and environmental history, I intend to assign this volume to graduate and undergraduate students in one or more of those classes.