Between Barkley and Kentucky Lakes lies a wooded land that looks from above like the flattened thumb of a green giant. This 240-square-mile peninsula, known as the Land Between the Lakes, has been a US national recreation area for the last half-century. The place swallows up its few campgrounds, creating a vacuous tranquility. In this volume, Foresta explores how this forgotten and bypassed region became a national recreation area, and uses its history to retrieve old attitudes toward nature, progress, and personal development.