Monument Road:A NovelCharlie Quimby365 pages, softcover: $16.95.Torrey House Press, 2013. Rancher Leonard Self is the type of elderly man who keeps “his shades drawn, his talk necessary, his actions to the problem at hand.” In the wake of his wife Inetta’s death, he’s been winnowing his ranch goods, his farmhouse, his life itself, succumbing to […]
Books
Posted inMay 12, 2014: Parks for All?
Rock Art of the Grand Canyon Region
Rock Art of the Grand Canyon RegionDon D. Christensen, Jerry Dickey, and Steven M. Freers,248 pages, softcover:$24.95.Sunbelt Publications, Inc., 2013 Hiking the Grand Canyon is a journey through geologic time: The pink sedimentary layers, the limestone left by antediluvian seas, and the river-carved gorge are stunning reminders of our planet’s age. But as Rock Art […]
Posted inArticles
Will our ‘dam nation’ free its rivers?
A new film explores a growing movement to remove dams that have outlived their usefulness.
Posted inApril 28, 2014: Two-Wheel Revolution
Embracing parched ground
All the Land to Hold UsRick Bass322 pages, hardcover: $25.Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013. Rick Bass’ fourth novel, All the Land to Hold Us, focuses on human desire and – like the Montana writer’s many previous books – our relationship with the natural world. Richard is a geologist who reads rock layers to find oil, fossils […]
Posted inApril 28, 2014: Two-Wheel Revolution
Minidoka: An American Concentration Camp by Teresa Tamura
Minidoka: An American Concentration Camp Teresa Tamura, 305 pages, hardcover: $27.95. Caxton Press, 2013 In the wake of the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an order forcing the West Coast’s entire Japanese and Japanese American population to relocate to internment camps. Photojournalist Teresa Tamura, a third-generation Japanese American, tells the […]
Posted inApril 28, 2014: Two-Wheel Revolution
Shady dealings in the desert
SunlandDon Waters200 pages, hardcover:$25.95.University of Nevada Press, 2013. Sid Dulaney leaves his cheating girlfriend behind in Massachusetts and returns home to Tucson in Sunland, Oregon writer Don Waters’ hilarious first novel. Sid had worked as an itinerant teacher, but finds himself jobless in Tucson, where he spends his time looking after his beloved grandmother, Nana. […]
Posted inApril 14, 2014: A landscape of surprises
49 trout streams of southern Colorado
49 Trout Streams of Southern Colorado Mark D. Williams and W. Chad McPhail, 120 pages, softcover:$27.95. University of New Mexico Press. 2013. For southern Colorado anglers in search of plentiful, hard-fighting trout, getting to gold-medal waters is the easy part: there’s the Gunnison, the Frying Pan, and the Animas, to name a few. But as […]
Posted inMarch 17, 2014: When California Kicks Coal
Cracks in the urban-chic facade
The Residue YearsMitchell S. Jackson352 pages, hardcover: $26.Bloomsbury USA, 2013. Today, most people who think of Portland, Ore., picture charismatic bridges spanning the sparkling Willamette River, cozy coffeehouses and brewpubs on rain-slick streets, and passionate environmentalists bicycling to farmers markets. But behind the scenes, Portland in the 1990s teemed with crack dealers and users willing […]
Posted inMarch 17, 2014: When California Kicks Coal
Ordinary people
Return to OakpineRon Carlson272 pages, hardcover: $18.90.Viking Press, 2013. Welcome to Oakpine, a fictional small town on Wyoming’s eastern plains where four high school pals reunite in 1999, after 30 years spent leading very separate lives. In his latest novel, Return to Oakpine, the award-winning author Ron Carlson tells a moving but quiet tale about […]
Posted inMarch 3, 2014: Fallon’s deadly legacy
Brutal frontier
The SonPhilipp Meyer592 pages, softcover: $16.99.Ecco, 2014. “The land was hard on its sons, harder yet on the sons of other lands,” writes Philipp Meyer in The Son, a masterful, gripping portrait of America’s Western expansion told through the lives of one Texas family. The Son braids together the stories of three members of the […]
Posted inMarch 3, 2014: Fallon’s deadly legacy
Hope and history
In The Light Of JusticeWalter Echo-Hawk325 pages, softcover: $19.95.Fulcrum Publishing, 2013. It’s unthinkable that kids in America would ever be allowed to play “slaves and masters,” writes Walter Echo-Hawk, but we don’t see anything wrong with Junior strapping on the trusty ol’ cap-shooters for a game of “cowboys and Indians.” Echo-Hawk, a Pawnee tribal member […]
Posted inMarch 3, 2014: Fallon’s deadly legacy
Vanishing Ice: Alpine and Polar Landscapes in Art: 1775-2012
Vanishing Ice: Alpine and Polar Landscapes in Art, 1775-2012Barbara C. Matilsky, 144 pages, paperback: $39.95. Whatcom Museum, 2013 When intrepid artists first ventured to the poles two centuries ago, they returned with paintings and sketches that made the region’s otherworldly starkness seem elegant and timeless. More recently, artists portray a landscape that is running out […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 2014: The Gila $olution
Pacific Crest Trail: A Journey in Photographs by Chris Alexander
We recommend using the gallery view to enjoy these photographs. Pacific Crest Trail: A Journey in Photographs Chris Alexander, 120 pages, hardcover: $49.95. wanderingthewild.com, 2013. At 2,660 miles long and with over 400,000 total feet of elevation change, the Pacific Crest Trail, which stretches from Mexico to Canada, is not for the weak-legged. Chris Alexander’s […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 2014: The Gila $olution
Montana escape
High and InsideRussell Rowland230 pages, softcover: $16.95Bangtail Press, 2013. Ex-Red Sox pitcher Pete Hurley comes to Bozeman to start a new life after a series of tragic mishaps that left him publicly shamed in Massachusetts. “Just as I was about to get over the incident that ended my baseball career,” he explains, “a drunken accident […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 2014: The Gila $olution
The first comic book with an all-Native American superhero team returns
Conversation with Jon Proudstar about the return of his comic book series, ‘Tribal Force.’
Posted inFebruary 17, 2014: The Gila $olution
Tracking America’s ice-age pioneers
In the Shadow of the Sabertooth: A Renegade Naturalist Considers Global Warming, the First Americans and the Terrible Beasts of the PleistoceneDouglas Peacock200 pages, paperback: $15.AK Press/ Counterpunch, 2013. Doug Peacock, author of Grizzly Years and Walking It Off, once walked point as a polar bear guard on an Arctic expedition, armed with only a […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 2014: The Hanford Whistleblowers
Review: A Russian American Photographer in Tlingit Country: Vincent Soboleff in Alaska
A Russian American Photographer in Tlingit Country: Vincent Soboleff in AlaskaSergei Kan, 288 pages, hardcover: $39.95, University of Oklahoma Press, 2013 In A Russian American Photographer in Tlingit Country: Vincent Soboleff in Alaska, ethnologist Sergei Kan brings 137 century-old images to light. Taken between 1890 and 1920 by amateur photographer Vincent Soboleff, they portray Tlingit […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 2014: The Hanford Whistleblowers
Storm and stress on the frontier
Crossing PurgatoryGary Schanbacher292 pages, hardcover: $25.95.Pegasus Books, 2013. Thompson Grey abandons his Indiana farm in 1858 and joins a caravan of pioneers trekking west along the Santa Fe Trail in Gary Schanbacher’s accomplished new novel. Crossing Purgatory is a moral Western that questions what any decent human being owes another amid the harsh conditions of […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 2014: The Hanford Whistleblowers
This is a man’s world
Ballistics: A NovelD.W. Wilson400 pages, hardcover: $26.Bloomsbury, 2013. Nestled in British Columbia’s remote Kootenay Valley, the town of Invermere is a place where “sons take after their dads and teenagers in lift-kit trucks catch air off train tracks … burn shipping flats at the gravel pits and slurp homebrew that swims with wood ether.” Here, […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 2014: Building a More Sustainable West, One City at a Time
Las Vegas Periphery: Views from the Edge, by Laurie Brown and Sally Denton
Las Vegas Periphery: Views from the EdgePhotographs by Laurie Brown, essay by Sally Denton, 96 pages, hardcover: $60. George F. Thompson Publishing, 2013 At the edge of cities, development and nature collide. That juxtaposition has always fascinated photographer Laurie Brown, and she explores it fully in Las Vegas Periphery. Focusing on a city that symbolizes […]