Review of ‘Wild Idea: Buffalo and Family in a Difficult Land’ by Dan O’Brien.
Book Reviews
Posted inOctober 27, 2014: Defuse the West
Nowhere left to run
Review of “Point of Direction” by Rachel Weaver
Posted inOctober 27, 2014: Defuse the West
Review of “The Color of Being Born” by Michael Cadieux
Paintings that depict the precarious relationship between humankind and the natural world.
Posted inOctober 13, 2014: Charles Bowden's Fury
“If there’s squash bugs in heaven, I ain’t staying” by Stacia Spragg-Braude
If there’s squash bugs in heaven, I ain’t staying Stacia Spragg-Braude, 200 pages, hardcover: $29.95 Museum of New Mexico Press, 2013 Nestled amid the orchards of New Mexico’s Rio Grande Valley is the old farming village of Corrales, where 85-year-old Evelyn Losack harvests fruit on land that has been in her family for 150 years. […]
Posted inOctober 13, 2014: Charles Bowden's Fury
Writing the unthinkable
Things We Do Not Talk About: Exploring Latino/a Literature Through Essays and InterviewsDaniel A. Olivas202 pages,softcover: $21 San Diego State University Press, 2014. After 24 years as a lawyer in the California Department of Justice, Daniel A. Olivas has heard a lot of stories. His seventh book, Things We Do Not Talk About, gathers essays […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 2014: Books & Essays
A new century with carnivores
Learning to see predators as companions, not competition.
Posted inSeptember 15, 2014: Books & Essays
Beauty and chaos, standing together
Review of ‘The Carry Home; Lessons from the American Wilderness’ by Gary Ferguson.
Posted inSeptember 15, 2014: Books & Essays
Readers’ favorite books
As part of our annual Books & Essays print edition, we asked our readers, Facebook fans and Twitter followers what their favorite books about the West are and why. Many of you responded with fantastic titles for a wide variety of reasons. Here they are: Replies from Twitter: Replies from Facebook:
Posted inSeptember 15, 2014: Books & Essays
Conservation wisdom from the radical center
Review of ‘Stitching the West Back Together: Conservation of Working Landscapes.’
Posted inSeptember 15, 2014: Books & Essays
Fall is for reading
HCN editors’ pick of the best new fiction and non-fiction.
Posted inSeptember 15, 2014: Books & Essays
Photographs of America’s pronghorn antelope
Review of “A Pronghorn Year” by Dick Kettlewell.
Posted inSeptember 15, 2014: Books & Essays
The bloody, brave beginnings of the Northwest
Review of ‘The Bully of Order’ by Brian Hart.
Posted inSeptember 15, 2014: Books & Essays
Tragedy, coincidence and patterns
Review of “Downwind: A People’s History of the Nuclear West” by Sarah Alisabeth Fox.
Posted inSeptember 1, 2014: Lost in the Woods
Murder in Old San Francisco
Review of ‘Frog Music’ by Emma Donoghue
Posted inSeptember 1, 2014: Lost in the Woods
Sovereign contempt
Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire:A Story of Wealth, Ambition and SurvivalPeter Stark366 pages, hardcover: $27.99.HarperCollins, 2014. Everyone knows about the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804-’06, but another entrepreneurial foray a few years later — larger, bolder, and, ultimately, a debacle – has fallen into historical oblivion. The Astor Expedition […]
Posted inAugust 18, 2014: Alaska's Uncertain Food Future
A Taxonomy of Landscape
A Taxonomy of LandscapeVictoria Sambunaris, essay by Natasha Egan, short story by Barry Lopez. 126 pages with 36 page booklet, hardcover: $60. Radius Books, 2014. To create A Taxonomy of Landscape, Victoria Sambunaris traveled America’s interstates and backroads alone for months with a 5-by-7-inch wooden field camera, driven, she says, by “an unrelenting curiosity to […]
Posted inAugust 18, 2014: Alaska's Uncertain Food Future
Metamorphosis in Winnemucca
The Days Of Anna MadrigalArmistead Maupin288 pages, hardcover:$26.99. Harper Collins, 2014. California author Armistead Maupin has returned with the ninth and final volume in his much-loved Tales of the City series. Maupin, who has long refused to be pigeonholed as a “gay writer,” writes about contemporary San Francisco and the love lives of both gays […]
Posted inAugust 18, 2014: Alaska's Uncertain Food Future
Reinventing the Sundance Kid
Sundance: A NovelDavid Fuller352 pages, hardcover: $27.95.Riverhead, 2014. What if an Old West legend left the outlaw life behind to embark on a mission to find his lost love? David Fuller’s second novel recasts the fate of Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, better known to history and movie fans as the Sundance Kid, who allegedly perished along […]