Feature

How Arizona's culture helped shape the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords

If you want to understand why Jared Lee Loughner shot Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and 18 others at a Tucson Safeway in 2011, look to Arizona’s soulless culture and vitriolic politics.

Editor's Note

Have we learned anything from the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords?

The shooting of Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others needs to be seen in the cultural and political context of life in modern Arizona.

Dear Friends

Craig Childs is HCN's latest contributing editor

Craig Childs becomes a contributing editor; High Country News has telephone troubles; former interns Dave Frey and Emilene Ostlind get new jobs; and corrections.

Uncommon Westerners

Environmental warrior Martin Litton is still fighting at 95

Martin Litton, who has spent his entire life fighting to preserve Western landscapes, is still battling to save California’s giant sequoias.

Book Reviews

Bucking the stereotypes: A review of West of 98

The anthology West of 98: Living and Writing the New American West assembles the thoughts of 67 Western writers.

A life measured in cordwood: A review of Into the Heat: My Love Affair with Trees, Fire, Saws and Men

Cindy Bellinger's memoir, Into the Heat: My Love Affair with Trees, Fire, Saws and Men, introduces us to a determined, 60-something, chainsaw-wielding Western woman.

Essays

I don't love my dog

It's hard to love your dog when she keeps rolling in dead animals and bringing half-eaten deer parts into your formerly tranquil home.

Letters

We the corporate campaign donors?

The troubling tentacles of Citizens United

Monkey-wrenchers to the rescue

The error of the well-intentioned

We need Wilderness Watch

The shine of the golden saddle

Current

Obama praises natural gas, but is there enough to satisfy U.S. demand?

In his State of the Union speech, President Obama tried to please everyone, but even his renewable energy proposals rely on finding more natural gas than may exist.

Photojournalist Lisa Hamilton explores rural California

For her project, Real Rural, photojournalist Lisa Hamilton traveled throughout California, interviewing and photographing scores of rural people.

Communities help pay for ecosystem services provided by forests

Watershed partnerships between communities and the federal government help make ratepayers more responsible for the health of their water supply.

Growing grizzly population conflicts with USDA sheep research station

As Yellowstone's grizzlies spread into the Centennial Mountains, some fear conflicts will arise with the century-old federal Sheep Experiment Station, which summers its flocks in bear habitat on the Idaho-Montana border.