Feature

The Last Ride

Longtime hitchhiker Dev Carey tells Michelle Nijhuis about some of his best – and worst – adventures on Western highways.

Editor's Note

No frigate like a book

This special issue focuses on books and essays that help us understand the complex, chaotic West.

News

Making a home for hope

Laura Paskus interviews Western intellectual, activist and writer Rebecca Solnit.

Borders and saints

Latino writer Luis Alberto Urrea talks about the border and remembers the women in his family who inspired him.

Book Reviews

Fall reading

A list of the most intriguing current books by Western authors or on Western subjects.

Literary trivia of the West

Test your knowledge with a Western literary trivia quiz.

Mystery in Montana

Deirdre McNamer’s new novel, Red Rover, beautifully captures the unromantic realism of Montana’s small towns.

Looking forward, looking back

William Kittredge brings together new and selected essays about life in the West in The Next Rodeo.

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.

‘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.

Wet words

Brian Doyle recommends the best reads about the Pacific Northwest, with particular emphasis on his home state, Oregon.

Bloodied but unbowed

The Western novel is not entirely dead; it has simply changed a great deal since the glory days of Zane Grey.

Essays

In Large and Sunlit Land

Peter Chilson ponders the parallel fates of two lovely and ravaged lands: The Southwest desert in America and the West Coast of Africa.

Six Good Places

David Oates ranges from the Sierra Nevada to Aix-en-Provence as he considers the particular qualities that make a place worth living in.

Heard Around the West

Heard Around the West

Counseling councilmen; a very virtual “virtual” fence; Arizona vs. college students; trapped in a CT scan; trophy land; smelling like a dog; paying taxes with skis.

Letters

Deer yes, cows no

Don't pop the cork yet

Risky dam business