NatGeo book features beauty of the CNMI

The CNMI joins a collection of breathtaking photographs and short stories about America’s 50 states, six territories, and Washington, D.C. in a new National Geographic book, America the Beautiful, that also features quotes from people from those places about what they love most about their home.

The book, which calls the CNMI as the “Ageless Northern Mariana Islands,” quotes Rep. Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan (Ind-MP), who gives readers a glimpse of the CNMI and its people. “Imagine feeling that the land beneath your feet has been home to your ancestors for thousands of years. That is how the people of the Marianas feel every day. As minute as our islands may be in the vastness of the Pacific, they are enduring. And we feel enduringly rooted to them,” he said.

The book aims to showcase what makes the whole of United States great by featuring wild and beautiful places on both land and sea and to remember the beauty of travel. This collection was inspired by the earlier travels across the United States by English professor Katharine Lee Bates in the 1800’s who also wrote the poem America the Beautiful that later became a song and a patriotic anthem of Americans today.

Other places featured in the book are Connecticut, Idaho, Maine, Tennessee, Wyoming, Colorado, Alaska, and Hawaii.

Businessman, philanthropist, and chemical engineer Robert F. Smith appreciates the diversity of Colorado’s geography and its people. “People come to Colorado to experience its natural beauty and its welcoming people who possess a uniquely pioneering spirit,” he said.

Award-winning singer and songwriter Jewel describes her home state of Alaska as the last frontier. “It’s a wild, vast land no fence can tame. Alps challenge the sky on the white wings of glaciers, the tips of which touch the taciturn sea in their slow migration. Bent grass tells of a bear’s quiet wandering. The songs of wolves fill the night skies. The northern lights is a spectacle beyond any psychedelic. Alaska is one of the last truly wild places, a treasure…”

Former President Barrack Obama represented his place of birth in this book. “No place else could have provided me with the environment in which I could not only grow, but also get a sense of being loved. There is no doubt that the residue of Hawaii will always stay with me; it’s a part of my core. What’s best in me and what’s best in my message, is consistent with the tradition of Hawaii,” he said.

America the Beautiful: A Story in Photographs is currently a bestseller and available on amazon.com.