A trio of new books take a look at Abbey’s mixed legacy on environment, gender and immigration.
Andrea Clark Mason
Posted inJune 9, 2014: Border Out of Control
Thumbs up and still breathing
Ahead of the Flaming Front: A Life on FireJerry D. Mathes II221 pages, softcover: $17.95.Caxton Press, 2013. Jerry D. Mathes’ second nonfiction book, Ahead of the Flaming Front, portrays the day-to-day life of a wildland firefighter. With a poet’s sense of language, Mathes describes his experiences as a rookie, gaining knowledge as he rises through […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2013: Mojave Squeeze
Reading to maturity
Works Cited: An Alphabetical Odyssey of Mayhem and MisbehaviorBrandon R. Schrand221 pages, softcover:$16.95. University of Nebraska Press, 2013. Brandon R. Schrand’s second book, Works Cited: An Alphabetical Odyssey of Mayhem and Misbehavior, retraces the Idaho author’s life through his obsessive love of literature. Each personal essay is paired with notes about a book that influenced […]
Posted inOctober 31, 2011: Omens from a Vanished Sea
Mapping the Hi-Line: A review of Honyocker Dreams
Honyocker Dreams: Montana MemoriesDavid Mogen227 pages, hardcover: $21.95.University of Nebraska Press, 2011. Colorado writer David Mogen grew up along Montana’s Hi-Line, just below the Canadian border and east of the Rockies, as his father moved the family from one small town to the next. Honyocker Dreams begins with Mogen’s return to the Hi-Line many years […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 2011: Redemption
Don’t tell her she can’t: a profile of author Mary Clearman Blew
Author and professor Mary Clearman Blew grew up on cattle ranches outside Lewistown, Mont., in the ’40s and ’50s, the great grand-daughter of homesteaders. She’s written about her family’s legacy and the changing West in nonfiction (All But the Waltz: Essays on a Montana Family), short stories (Runaway), and a novel, Jackalope Dreams, about ranchers […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 2011: Redemption
Mary Clearman Blew reads from her book, This is Not the Ivy League
The author reads part of the prologue to This is Not the Ivy League.
Posted inSeptember 3, 2010: Migration
Nature and cities in context
Cities and Nature in the American WestEdited by Char Miller288 pages, softcover: $34.95.University of Nevada Press, 2010. In Cities and Nature in the American West, leading environmental historians dissect the relationship between the region’s urban areas and the landscapes in which they are set. In the introductory essay, editor Char Miller, director of the environmental […]
Posted inAugust 17, 2009: From Corn to Cabernet
Desperate people
The Mechanics of Falling and Other StoriesCatherine Brady227 pages, hardcover: $25.University of Nevada Press, 2009. In 11 deftly rendered short stories, Catherine Brady’s latest book, The Mechanics of Falling, introduces us to fragile people whose precarious lives are unraveling. Most of the book takes place in California, especially in and around San Francisco with its […]
Posted inApril 13, 2009: The Desert That Breaks Annie Proulx’s Heart
Avalanches for dummies
NameHomer HometownBozeman, Mont. OccupationExtreme-sports guinea pig Best LookPowder beard A man leans on a bamboo pole high above the slopes at Bridger Bowl near Bozeman, Mont. From a distance, he appears remarkably calm, even as ski patrollers throw explosives onto the snow-loaded slope directly above him. There’s a loud blast and a fracture forms in […]
Posted inDecember 8, 2008: Out in the cold
Night: not just for astronomers
Let There Be Night: Testimony on Behalf of the DarkEdited by Paul Bogard208 pages, softcover: $21.95.University of Nevada Press, 2008. Many of us in the rural West still get to enjoy dark skies and bright stars, but in urban areas around the world, night is not as black as it once was. Paul Bogard has […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2008: Hostile Takeover
Catastrophe or nature’s process
In The Blast Zone: Catastrophe and Renewal on Mount St. Helens Edited by Charles Goodrich, Kathleen Dean Moore, and Frederick Swanson124 pages, softcover: $15.95. Oregon State University Press, 2008. Twenty-five years after Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980, Oregon State University sponsored a four-day trip into the blast zone. Scientists, writers, artists and academics came […]
Posted inMay 12, 2008: Boom! Boom!
Small-town struggle in a big land
The Enders Hotel, winner of the 2007 River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize, chronicles a childhood and coming of age in Soda Springs, Idaho, amid the beauty of the high desert and the rampant alcoholism of a Western “company”town. After stints elsewhere in Idaho and in Washington, young Brandon Schrand, his mother, and stepfather settle in […]