Arthur Carhart: Wilderness ProphetTom Wolf294 pages, hardcover: $34.95.University Press of Colorado, 2008. A fiery conservationist who came of age in the late 1910s, Arthur Carhart had a penchant for highlighting the contradictions in the environmental movement, not to mention the conflicts of interest at the U.S. Forest Service, which employed him at a young age. […]
Books
Posted inDecember 8, 2008: Out in the cold
Two men, two paths
The OtherDavid Guterson256 pages, hardcover: $24.95.Random House, 2008. David Guterson’s newest novel, The Other, tells of the lasting friendship between two men. One chooses a life in the woods, while the other finds joy within city limits. Guterson, best known as the author of Snow Falling on Cedars, writes of the delicate balance between the […]
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 inNovember 21, 2008: Ultimate solution?
Bearing witness on the border
Exodus/ExodoCharles Bowden, Julian Cardona312 pages, 115 black-and-white photos, hardcover: $50.University of Texas Press, 2008. There are many ways to write about illegal immigration. One way is to shuffle through Immigration and Customs Enforcement reports, cherry-pick the latest data and file an article from a safe distance. Another way is to step into the fray, boots-on-the-ground, […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2008: Still Howling Wolf
A battle for the land – and soul – of the West
Denver native Stephen Trimble fell in love with the West from the back seat of the family car. On summer field trips with his mother and geologist father, Trimble developed a fine eye for red-rock country and the light that filled unspoiled valleys and vistas. He’s since produced gorgeous photography books and insightful natural and […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2008: Still Howling Wolf
Throwing off the yoke
Where the Ox Does Not Plow: A Mexican American BalladManuel Peña235 pages, hardcover: $24.95.University of New Mexico Press, 2008. An alcoholic father, a patient, long-suffering mother, a history of anxiety and depression, and a blinding desire to escape a troubled childhood. If that sounds like every other memoir you’ve read in the past decade, you’d […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2008: Prophets and politics
Living with trees
Between Earth and Sky: Our Intimate Connections to TreesNalini M. Nadkarni336 pages, hardcover: $24.95.University of California, 2008. Between Earth and Sky sets out to describe the many ways in which trees sustain us. When author Nalini Nadkarni was a girl in suburban Maryland, after school she would climb one of the eight maples in her […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2008: Prophets and politics
Tales from the heartwood
Working the Woods, Working the Sea: An Anthology of Northwest WritingEdited by Finn Wilcox and Jerry Gorsline400 pages, softcover, $22.Empty Bowl, 2008. The second edition of Working the Woods, Working the Sea — the first was published in 1986 — contains a lot of new material, but its core is still fiction, nonfiction and poetry […]
Posted inOctober 13, 2008: Back to the future
On the Stegner trail
Wallace Stegner and the American WestPhilip L. Fradkin 323 pages, hardcover: $27.50.Alfred A. Knopf, 2008. Like wanderers returning to the old hometown after a long time away, readers of Philip Fradkin’s new biography of Wallace Stegner will recognize familiar terrain as well as make fresh discoveries. Wallace Stegner and the American West arrives 15 […]
Posted inSeptember 9, 2008: Reclaiming the low country
The creation of wholeness
Finding Beauty in a Broken WorldTerry Tempest Williams416 pages, $26.Pantheon Books, 2008. When asked to accompany artist Lily Yeh to Rwanda to help create a memorial to the country’s genocide victims, author Terry Tempest Williams initially refused. Perhaps best known for her book Refuge, which draws a profound emotional parallel between her mother’s losing bout […]
Posted inSeptember 9, 2008: Reclaiming the low country
When war came home
The Eleventh ManIvan Doig416 pages, hardcover: $26.Harcourt, 2008. In our collective memory, World War II happened “over there.” But of course it also happened here — to soldiers’ families, to women who went to work for the first time outside their homes, to the planters of victory gardens. The war hit home particularly hard in […]
Posted inSeptember 9, 2008: Reclaiming the low country
Only the scared survive
The Better to Eat You With: Fear in the Animal WorldJoel Berger304 pages, hardcover: $29.University of Chicago Press, 2008. Where the Wild Things Were: Life, Death and Ecological Wreckage in a Land of Vanishing PredatorsWilliam Stolzenburg288 pages, hardcover: $24.99.Bloomsbury, 2008. A world without fear sounds nice, doesn’t it? Liberated from our dread of nosy bosses, […]
Posted inSeptember 9, 2008: Reclaiming the low country
Searching for something to search for
Roads to Quoz: An American MoseyWilliam Least Heat-Moon592 pages, hardcover: $27.99.Little, Brown and Company, 2008. It’s been a big year for aging adventurers; first, Rambo comes out of retirement, then Indiana Jones takes up another crusade. Now, road warrior William Least Heat-Moon returns to the nation’s back roads, seeking out the hidden histories, chitchat memoirs […]
Posted inSeptember 9, 2008: Reclaiming the low country
Book Notes
Wesley the Owl: The Remarkable Love Story of an Owl and His GirlStacey O’Brien, Free Press, August What a hoot! (Pun intended.) A fun and enlightening book about the fascinating world of owls and the humans who study them. Stacey O’Brien was a young biologist working in the Hogwarts-like atmosphere of the owl lab at […]
Posted inSeptember 9, 2008: Reclaiming the low country
Alexandra Fuller: A fine line between protest and profession
Listen to an exclusive, web-only interview with Alexandra Fuller. On a chilly Sunday morning in August, a group of protesters gathers outside the new Bureau of Land Management office at the north end of town. ExxonMobil has just announced the biggest quarterly profits in U.S. history, and heads are shaking unhappily over the rapid pace […]
Posted inSeptember 9, 2008: Reclaiming the low country
Cheewa James: Chronicler of the ‘Tribe That Wouldn’t Die’
Modoc: The Tribe That Wouldn’t DieCheewa James352 pages, softcover: $19.95.Naturegraph, 2008. With song and prayer, soil and prairie grass, Native American author Cheewa James recently honored the memory of her long-lost great-great uncle. Frank Modoc left his Oklahoma reservation for a Quaker seminary over 120 years ago, fell victim to tuberculosis and never returned. While […]
Posted inAugust 25, 2008: Hot Wheels
An unforgettable journey
So Brave, Young, and HandsomeLeif Enger285 pages, hardcover: $24.Atlantic Monthly Press, 2008. So Brave, Young, and Handsome, Leif Enger’s second novel, takes the reader on an action-packed journey across the West. In 1915, outlaw Glendon Hale, now a boat-builder who has been hiding out in a small Minnesota town for two decades, befriends Monte Becket, […]
Posted inAugust 25, 2008: Hot Wheels
Portrait of a threatened land
Travels in the Greater Yellowstone Jack Turner 288 pages, hardcover, $25.95. Thomas Dunne Books, 2008. Jack Turner’s Travels in the Greater Yellowstone chronicles both the subtle and radical changes that he’s seen in the place he’s called home for over three decades. Turner, author of several books on ecology and mountaineering, has watched this extraordinary […]
Posted inAugust 11, 2008: Trouble in (Private) Paradise
Living deep in place
Shopping for Porcupine: A Life in Arctic AlaskaSeth Kantner240 pages, hardcover: $28.Milkweed Editions, 2008. Shopping for Porcupine is a book that weaves between worry and worship, to borrow a phrase from its author, Seth Kantner. The autobiographical essays collected here offer a glimpse of Kantner’s life in his native north Alaska, portraying a harsh landscape […]