Book Reviews
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Thinking like a fish
The essays in Chad Hanson’s collection Swimming with Trout celebrate the wonder of water and its mysterious inhabitants.
by Irene Wanner, Mar 31, 2008 -
Reasons to stay
In Charlotte Bacon’s novel, Split Estate, a damaged New York family seeks refuge and renewal on a Wyoming ranch.
by T.K. Dalton, Mar 31, 2008 -
Remembering Rrrrrip City!
The essays in Matt Love’s anthology Red Hot and Rollin’ take a lively and nostalgic look at Oregon in 1977, the year the Portland Trailblazers won their one and only NBA championship.
by Michelle Nijhuis, Mar 03, 2008 -
Men, machines, memories
In Five Skies, novelist Ron Carlson tells the terse and occasionally poetic stories of three emotionally damaged men working in Idaho for the summer.
by T.K. Dalton, Mar 03, 2008 -
Die with me
Three new books about the West’s Indian wars – Ned Blackhawk’s Violence Over the Land, Kingsley Bray’s Crazy Horse: A Lakota Life, and Robert W. Larson’s Gall: Lakota War Chief – seem to romanticize a violent past.
by Annie Dawid, Feb 04, 2008 -
Madame Merian and her passion for metamorphosis
In Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis, Kim Todd uncovers the life and legacy of a pioneering 17th century woman
by Michelle Nijhuis, Jan 21, 2008 -
New West, Next West
In the short stories in Last Call, Colorado writer Blair Oliver looks at the desperate suburban lives of modern-day Western men.
by Peter Soliunas, Jan 21, 2008 -
The power of music, the power of obsession
Sarah Bird’s well-written novel The Flamenco Academy weaves the history of this dramatic dance form into a obsessed young woman’s search for identity.
by Margaret Foley, Nov 12, 2007 -
How a restaurant changed the world
A famous French natural-foods restaurant in Berkeley, Calif., is the subject of Thomas McNamee’s book, Alice Waters and Chez Panisse: The Romantic, Impractical, Often Eccentric, Ultimately Brilliant Making of a Food Revolution.
by Alexander Lane, Nov 12, 2007 -
Bloodied but unbowed
The Western novel is not entirely dead; it has simply changed a great deal since the glory days of Zane Grey.
by Michelle Nijhuis, Oct 29, 2007 -
Wet words
Brian Doyle recommends the best reads about the Pacific Northwest, with particular emphasis on his home state, Oregon.
by Brian Doyle, Oct 29, 2007 -
‘Men standing in the shadows began to weep’
Writers John N. Maclean and Mark Matthews look closely at two famous – and deadly – Western wildfires in their new books, The Thirtymile Fire and A Great Day to Fight Fire.
by Ray Ring, Oct 29, 2007 -
Another near-death experience for environmentalism
Environmental contrarians Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger jump back into the fray with a new book, Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility.
by Brian Kevin, Oct 29, 2007 -
Looking forward, looking back
William Kittredge brings together new and selected essays about life in the West in The Next Rodeo.
by Claire Dederer, Oct 29, 2007 -
Mystery in Montana
Deirdre McNamer’s new novel, Red Rover, beautifully captures the unromantic realism of Montana’s small towns.
by Bruce Barcott, Oct 29, 2007 -
Thomas McGuane’s lonely freaks
The powerful short stories in Thomas McGuane’s Gallatin Canyon prove him to be the New West’s answer to Flannery O’Connor.
by Annie Dawid, Apr 02, 2007 -
Somewhere up the crazy river
In Upstream: Sons, Fathers, and Rivers, Robin Carey recounts a kayak journey up the Klamath River that he made with his son, Dev, and on the way explores the Careys’ troubled family history
by Jim Dean, Nov 27, 2006 -
Crafting the everyday
Janet Finn and Ellen Crain tell the history of Butte, Mont., from the viewpoint of its women in Motherlode: Legacies of Women’s Lives and Labors in Butte, Montana.
by Edwin Dobb, Nov 27, 2006 -
An encyclopedia of rivers
The huge, copiously illustrated Rivers of North America is the first comprehensive effort to detail the current state of the continent’s rivers
by Irene Wanner, Nov 27, 2006 -
Four decades of the Sierra Club
Michael McCloskey’s autobiography, In the Thick of It: My Life in the Sierra Club, covers four decades of his life and work as an environmentalist
by Steve Rumsey, Nov 13, 2006
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