Like it or not, dams define the West. This is the birthplace of big dams — Hoover, Glen Canyon, Grand Coulee — and to a large extent, these monuments have written the history of our cities and our agriculture. These days, Westerners talk more about taking down big dams than about building new ones. But […]
Books
Posted inMarch 6, 2006: Save Our Snow
Friends in high places
Breaking Through the Clouds is a compilation of essays by Richard Fleck, a scholar, writer and wanderer of the West’s high mountains. Fleck deftly weaves in the history and human background of each peak, quoting John Wesley Powell on the first ascent of Longs Peak in what is now Rocky Mountain National Park. Far from […]
Posted inMarch 6, 2006: Save Our Snow
Got Sun? Go Solar
Got Sun? Go Solar Rex A. Ewing and Doug Pratt 160 pages, softcover: $18.95, PixyJack Press, 2005. Tired of waiting for Washington, D.C., to make a serious commitment to solar power? Then pick up this information-packed but very readable book and get started on your own. Authors Rex Ewing and Doug Pratt explain home renewable […]
Posted inMarch 6, 2006: Save Our Snow
Exploring High Mountain Lakes in the Rockies
Exploring High Mountain Lakes in the Rockies Fred W. Rabe 146 pages, softcover: $29.95 Aquatic Ecosystems, 2006. Exploring High Mountain Lakes in the Rockies features dozens of color photographs, maps and sketches. But it’s not a travel guide to the approximately 8,000 high-elevation lakes speckling the region; instead of trails, biologist Fred Rabe describes geology, […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 2006: High Noon for Habitat
Under Ground: How Creatures of Mud and Dirt Shape Our World
Under Ground: How Creatures of Mud and Dirt Shape Our World Yvonne Baskin 237 pages, hardcover: $26.95 Island Press, 2005. Yvonne Baskin, a science writer, takes us on an intriguing tour of the planet’s soils and sediments. Did you know, for example, that because earthworms aren’t native to much of North America, fishermen should dump […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 2006: High Noon for Habitat
Coyote Warrior: One Man, Three Tribes and the Trial that Forged a Nation
Coyote Warrior: One Man, Three Tribes and the Trial that Forged a Nation Paul VanDevelder 324 pages, softcover: $19.95 University of Nebraska Press, 2005. “Coyote warriors” are the new generation of American Indian leaders who leave the reservation to train as attorneys, scientists or other professionals, then return home to help their tribes. Tribal governments, […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 2006: High Noon for Habitat
Stalking the boojum in the Sonoran Desert
From afar, the Sonoran Desert is a stonewashed, monochromatic expanse. Look closer, and you’ll swear that fantasy writer Lewis Carroll did the landscaping. Two rainy seasons each year give the Sonoran Desert stunning biodiversity and some pretty quirky plant species — many so specialized to a particular place that budding naturalists are likely to need […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 2006: High Noon for Habitat
Just where is that home on the range?
It’s easy to write about coming to the West. Legendary figures, such as Jack Kerouac, Ed Abbey and even John Denver, still inspire young people to follow them to the land of Rocky Mountain highs and red rock deserts in search of enlightenment. What’s harder to do, however, is to write about leaving the West. […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 2006: The Killing Fields
Seeking peace in nuclear times
In Folding Paper Cranes: An Atomic Memoir, former U.S. Marine Leonard Bird offers a personal account of nuclear war. His story shifts between Japan — the only place atomic bombs have been used in combat — to the pockmarked Nevada deserts that for 40 years were ground zero for the U.S. nuclear test program. Nearly […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 2006: The Killing Fields
Urban planning — with a wild touch
Feeling overwhelmed by pell-mell developments that consume the landscape of your community? Two new books suggest a remedy — a variety of innovative planning methods, illustrated with plenty of maps, diagrams and photos. Typical subdivisions are shaped around the “human context” — roads and schools, zoning, and the marketability of the lots and houses — […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 2006: The Killing Fields
The Colorado Plateau II: Biophysical, Socioeconomic, and Cultural Research
The Colorado Plateau II: Biophysical, Socioeconomic, and Cultural Research Charles van Riper III and David J. Mattson, eds. 352 pages, hardcover: $35 University of Arizona Press, 2005. Every two years, scientists gather to discuss the history, biology and geology of the vast Colorado Plateau, which sprawls across the Four Corners area. This book presents their […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 2006: The Killing Fields
John Muir: Family, Friends, and Adventures
John Muir: Family, Friends, and Adventures Sally M. Miller and Daryl Morrison, ed. 272 pages, hardcover: $29.95 University of New Mexico Press, 2005. This new collection of essays, John Muir: Family, Friends, and Adventures, manages to break fresh ground in discussing the great naturalist. Historic photographs, sketches and excerpts from letters brighten the sometimes-scholarly essays, […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 2006: The Killing Fields
Slaughter in Serene: The Columbia Coal Strike Reader
Slaughter in Serene: The Columbine Coal Strike Reader Lowell May and Richard Myers, ed. 196 pages, softcover: $19.05 Bread and Roses Workers’ Cultural Center, 2005. workersbreadandroses.org, 303-433-1852 Coal mining has played a major role in the histories of most Western states, including Colorado. Slaughter in Serene tells the story of striking miners in the late […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 2006: Timberlands up for grabs
A eulogy for the West that was
Mourning the loss of a special place has become a common plaint in the West. Changes in paradise always evoke regret and loss, especially when they happen on your watch and seem irrevocable. Roger Brown, a 70-year-old filmmaker who lives near Gypsum, Colo., has written, photographed and self-published Requiem for the West, an impassioned lament […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 2006: Timberlands up for grabs
Planting seeds for preservation
In Cities in the Wilderness, former Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt asks: “Is it realistic to suggest expanding land protection programs in a season when the Bush administration and Congress are intent not upon expanding, but upon shrinking the reach of our environmental laws?” Babbitt’s answer is a resounding “Yes.” He continues, “History instructs […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 2006: Timberlands up for grabs
A watery mystery in New Mexico
Even if you haven’t read a mystery novel since the Hardy Boys, give Rudolfo Anaya’s new book, Jemez Spring, a whirl. All in one day, Sonny Baca, an Albuquerque private investigator, works to solve the governor’s murder at the Jemez Springs Bath House and deactivate a nuclear bomb left in the Valles Caldera to blow […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 2006: Timberlands up for grabs
Deciphering humanity’s hardware
History buffs can easily get an education alongside Western highways. Interpretive signs point out where Chief Joseph retreated, and where Lewis and Clark spent the winter. But what if you want to know what’s coming out of the smokestack in the distance? Or what gets made inside that gigantic steel structure you just passed? The […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 2006: Timberlands up for grabs
Eight decades of magic and beauty at Ghost Ranch
New Mexico’s most famous resort, Ghost Ranch, has charmed many visitors. One overwhelmed admirer proclaimed that any description of the place amounted to “an advertisement for God and New Mexico.” Area historian Lesley Poling-Kempes tells the story of Ghost Ranch and its lovers in her absorbing new book, Ghost Ranch. Ghost Ranch covers 20,000 acres […]
Posted inDecember 26, 2005: A New Green Revolution
Politics, prejudice and predators
In his new book, Predatory Bureaucracy, conservationist Michael J. Robinson leads readers through the 120-year-history of the U.S. Biological Survey. When it began in the late 1800s, it was run by biologists mostly interested in studying stuffed birds. However, political pressure from cattle- and sheep-growers transformed the benign agency into a powerhouse dedicated to predator […]
Posted inDecember 26, 2005: A New Green Revolution
A natural and cultural history of the Rocky Mountains
The backbone of the West, the Great Divide, stretches some 1,100 rugged miles from Montana to New Mexico. It’s been the home of Native Americans, artists, miners, mountain men, preachers and charlatans, back-to-the-landers and trust funders. Each group has defined the landscape for its own purpose, leading author Gary Ferguson to conclude, “Hardly a story […]