Books on Joshua Tree National Park
Below is a listing of many of the books available about Joshua Tree National Park. These range from hiking guides, to comprehensive information books and photo books. We use some of these ourselves, and note that in the descriptions. At the bottom of each listing, we list a number of places where these can be currently purchased. Click on the logo of the store you would like to use. Note that books occasionally go out of stock or are discontinued at certain stores. In this case, simply try another merchant, if available.
Go to Joshua Tree National Park Photo Prints
Joshua Tree: The Complete Guide
This is without doubt the best overall guide book to the park. The same is true with each of James Kaiser's books, also available for Grand Canyon, Acadia, or Yosemite. They are printed on high quality glossy paper, and are full of information and beautiful full color photos. There are guides that do a better job with individual subjects like hiking, but nothing is better as a one book solution. We use this book personally and recommend it.
Hiking Joshua Tree National Park
This is the Joshua Tree National Park entry in the extensive Falcon Guides series. When looking for a hiking guide book of a park, we generally look for the Falcon Guide first. With few exceptions, they are very good at what they do, and we like to have a consistent format to get used to. Like most books in the Falcon series, there is also a much shorter "Best Easy Day Hikes" companion book, that describes only the shorter hikes. It is listed next.
Best Easy Day Hikes Joshua Tree National Park
This is the Joshua Tree National Park entry in the extensive Falcon Guides Best Easy Day Hikes series. This is the shorter version of the book above. It focuses on the shorter, easier hikes in the book, although some can still be quite steep. There is less general information, and the trail information is more abbreviated, but if all you plan to do is the quick and easy trails, you can save a little money over the full guide above.
Best Climbs Joshua Tree National Park
Rock climbing is a very popular activity in Joshua Tree National Park. There are many guides available for it, but this is one of the newest, and it is published by Falcon, the producer of the above excellent hiking books.
Joshua Tree: The Story Behind the Scenery
This is the Joshua Tree National Park edition of the very common "The Story Behind the Scenery" series. These books are very commonly found in the visitor centers and gift shops of the parks. They are short, but they provide good photos and general information on the park itself.
