A reading list for understanding the region.
Books
Posted inNovember 14, 2016: The Long View
Adventures of a roving Bookmobile driver
This is not your typical library job.
Posted inNovember 14, 2016: The Long View
How to tell the story of the West, rural and urban
A residential library for readers, poets and naturalists takes shape.
Posted inNovember 14, 2016: The Long View
Insights from a climate oasis
Author Kathleen Alcalá on learning to become an activist.
Posted inNovember 14, 2016: The Long View
Native American literature’s shapeshifter
Novelist Stephen Graham Jones on how he transcends stereotypes.
Posted inNovember 14, 2016: The Long View
Recommended reading to take you into the next year
The season’s best titles for new fiction and nonfiction.
Posted inNovember 14, 2016: The Long View
Revisiting Idaho’s lead-poisoning legacy
A new book documents a catastrophe in Silver Valley.
Posted inNovember 14, 2016: The Long View
Science fiction’s warnings for the present
Kim Stanley Robinson on climate change and the precarious health of the planet.
Posted inNovember 14, 2016: The Long View
The deeper meaning of trails
Insightful new books in the well-worn genre of trail literature.
Posted inNovember 14, 2016: The Long View
Terry Tempest Williams and the refuge of change
One of the West’s most beloved authors revisits Great Salt Lake.
Posted inOctober 31, 2016: A Monumental Divide
War and peace on the Colorado River
A new book makes a case for optimism in the basin, but the threat of water battles will always be around.
Posted inOctober 3, 2016: Purple Rain
Inside Wyoming’s rough, tough underground
Boom and bust cycles shape the fates of Wyoming’s young people.
Posted inSeptember 19, 2016: Frontera Incognita
A mother’s flight into the desert
An excerpt from Black Dove: Mamá, Mi’jo, and Me.
Posted inSeptember 19, 2016: Frontera Incognita
The disappearing art of Southwestern cemeteries
A review of En Recuerdo de, a look at the afterlife of Mexican cemeteries in the West.
Posted inAugust 8, 2016: Line of Descent
Sex, death and spaghetti: Jim Harrison’s last writings
The curmudgeonly author’s last collection, published just weeks before his death, remains preoccupied with the joy of life.
Posted inJuly 25, 2016: Salmon Power
See new pictures of the desert’s natural art
In ‘Death Valley: Painted Light,’ the landscape takes on abstract forms.
Posted inJuly 25, 2016: Salmon Power
On those who live and die along the border
Two new books look at the ever-changing face of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Posted inArticles
What can we still learn from Edward Abbey, 25 years after his death?
A trio of new books take a look at Abbey’s mixed legacy on environment, gender and immigration.
Posted inJune 27, 2016: The New Advocates
See the vanishing rest stops of the American West
A review of “The Last Stop” and a look at iconic roadside waypoints.