Books

SpectacleSusan Steinberg137 pages, softcover: $14.Graywolf Press, 2013. San Francisco-based writer Susan Steinberg experiments with form and structure as she examines the roles men and women play in her arresting story collection, Spectacle. “The woman,” she writes, “is supposed to know the subtle difference between being a woman and performing one.” An unnamed woman narrates these […]

100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do: How My Brother DisappearedKim Stafford202 pages, softcover: $16.95.Trinity University Press, 2012. One of the happy consequences of reading Kim Stafford is that he makes you want to become a better person. The Portland-based author of 12 books of poetry and prose writes with a quiet gentleness, intimacy and kindness. […]

Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward CurtisTimothy Egan412 pages, hardcover: $28.Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012. In Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Timothy Egan, who also won the National Book Award in 2006 for The Worst Hard Times, chronicles the life story of photographer Edward […]

Canvas of Clay: Seven Centuries of Hopi Ceramic Art. Edwin L. Wade and Allan Cooke, 248 pages, softcover: $40. El Otro Lado, 2012. In Canvas of Clay, the authors explore the evolution of Hopi pottery from the 14th century until recent times. Pairing full-page color prints with scholarly narrative, historical photographs with schematic drawings, the […]

The Inventor and the Tycoon: A Gilded Age Murder and the Birth of Moving PicturesEdward Ball447 pages, hardcover: $29.95.Doubleday, 2013. Leland Stanford appeared to have it all: As president of the Big Four Associates, who built the Western half of the transcontinental railroad, the tycoon became one of 19th century San Francisco’s most influential entrepreneurs, […]

Passage to Wonderland. Michael A. Amundson, 208 pages, hardcover: $35. University Press of Colorado, 2012. In 1903, photographer Joseph Stimson rode in a horse-drawn buggy along a new 50-mile route leading from Cody, Wyo., to the east entrance of Yellowstone National Park. He stopped periodically to take pictures for a display at the 1904 World’s […]

On Top of Spoon MountainJohn Nichols232 pages, hardcover: $24.95.University of New Mexico Press, 2012. In a career that spans five decades, New Mexico author John Nichols has written more books and screenplays than he can count on his fingers and toes. His first novel, The Sterile Cuckoo, was published when he was 23, and The […]

The Snow ChildEowyn Ivey416 pages, softcover: $14.99.Reagan Arthur Books, 2012. Eowyn Ivey’s surefooted and captivating debut novel, The Snow Child, begins in 1920, as Mabel and Jack, middle-aged homesteaders in Alaska, try to rough it through their second winter there. They’d moved West to escape painful memories of their only child, stillborn 10 years earlier, […]

Evel Knievel DaysPauls Toutonghi293 pages,hardcover: $24.Crown, 2012. Khosi Saqr Clark, the narrator of Pauls Toutonghi’s funny and winsome second novel, Evel Knievel Days, isn’t a typical native of Butte. Sure, he loves Montana and enjoys the annual Evel Knievel Days spectacle, complete with its “American Motordome Wall of Death,” but his neurotic nature (“the obsessive-compulsive’s […]

Jubilee Hitchhiker: The Life and Times of Richard BrautiganWilliam Hjortsberg896 pages,hardcover: $38.Counterpoint Press, 2012. Richard Brautigan grew up in Oregon, convinced he’d be an influential writer. He rose to fame in San Francisco and later split his time between Bolinas, Calif., Livingston, Mont. and Japan. He published 10 poetry books and a dozen novels, including […]