How to Read the American West: A Field GuideWilliam Wyckoff384 pages, paperback: $44.95.University of Washington Press, 2014. Too hefty to be carried in a hip pocket or even a daypack, William Wyckoff’s How To Read The American West is a field guide unlike any other, with a focus on patterns, variations and the distribution of […]
Book Reviews
Posted inAugust 4, 2014: Idaho's Sewer System
The Ansel Adams Wilderness
The Ansel Adams WildernessPeter Essick, foreward by Jamie Williams112 pages, hardcover:$22.95.National Geographic Society, 2014. For 25 years, Peter Essick traveled the globe as a National Geographic photographer, and recently he was named one of the world’s 40 most influential nature photographers. In 2010, Essick began “a potentially controversial” project in his native California: shooting in […]
Posted inAugust 4, 2014: Idaho's Sewer System
The bomb builders’ wives
The Wives of Los AlamosTaraShea Nesbit233 pages, hardcover: $25.Bloomsbury, 2014. In her deft debut novel, Colorado writer TaraShea Nesbit imagines the lives of the wives of the men who were stationed in New Mexico’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, working on the Manhattan Project during World War II. Nesbit writes in the collective voice of the […]
Posted inJuly 21, 2014: On the Wild Edge
An artist’s road to redemption
The PainterPeter Heller288 pages, hardcover:$24.95.Alfred A. Knopf, 2014. If it’s possible to paint in words alone, to create a wildly colorful story of grief in sentences layered like one of van Gogh’s swirling night scenes, Colorado author Peter Heller accomplishes it in his second novel, The Painter, narrated by artist Jim Stegner. A fly fisherman […]
Posted inJuly 21, 2014: On the Wild Edge
Mustang modification
The Horse Lover: A Cowboy’s Quest to Save the Wild MustangsH. Alan Day with Lynn Wiese Sneyd, Foreword by Sandra Day O’Connor264 pages, hardcover:$24.95.University of Nebraska Press, 2014. You’ve heard of The Horse Whisperer. Now, meet The Horse Lover, a cowboy on a mission to save wild mustangs – 1,500 of them, all nickering and […]
Posted inJuly 21, 2014: On the Wild Edge
Photos of Bonneville Salt Flats
The Bonneville Salt Flats: Two Decades of Photography by Peter Vincent Peter Vincent with essays by Peter de Lory, Philip Linhares, Tom Fritz and others, 272 pages, hardcover: $85. Stance & Speed. 2013. “Salt fever”: That’s what drives thousands of people each year to gather with their hotrods, cars and motorcycles on the Utah-Nevada border, […]
Posted inJune 23, 2014: River of No Return
A Refugee in Her Own Land
Katie Gale: A Coast Salish Woman’s Life on Oyster BayLlyn De Danaan336 pages, hardcover: $29.95.Bison Books, 2013. In Katie Gale, anthropologist Llyn De Danaan chronicles the life of a 19th century Salish woman who married a white man, gave birth to four children, became a successful oysterwoman, suffered greatly in a divorce settlement, and watched […]
Posted inJune 23, 2014: River of No Return
Out here meets out there
Calamity JaneBernard Schopen270 pages, softcover:$16.95.Baobab Press, 2013. After two decades of silence, former mystery writer Bernard Schopen is back with Calamity Jane, a new novel that asks serious questions about the West. His protagonist, independent filmmaker Jane Harmon, returns triumphantly from Hollywood to Blue Lake, Nevada, to showcase The Last Roundup, a documentary she’s made […]
Posted inJune 23, 2014: River of No Return
Woven Identities: Basketry Art of Western North America by Valerie K. Verzuh
Woven Identities: Basketry Art of Western North America Valerie K. Verzuh, 219 pages, hardcover: $34.95, Museum of New Mexico Press, 2013 Few Native American languages have a word for “art.” Basket-weaving is not considered art, in the sense of work made for display; rather, as one Apache elder says, it is the creation of “pieces […]
Posted inJune 9, 2014: Border Out of Control
Consider the sparrow
The Urban BestiaryLyanda Lynn Haupt337 pages, hardcover: $27.Little Brown, 2013. Most communities across the West, urban and rural, are home to the animals in Lyanda Lynn Haupt’s new book, The Urban Bestiary, a collection of joyful meditations on the fauna that scamper over our lawns and roost on our power poles. While eastern gray squirrels, […]
Posted inJune 9, 2014: Border Out of Control
Tainted Revelations: The Art of Bill Ohrmann by Joe Ashbrook Nickell
Tainted Revelations: The Art of Bill Ohrmann Joe Ashbrook Nickell, 140 pages, hardcover: $45. Missoula Art Museum In Tainted Revelations: The Art of Bill Ohrmann, author Joe Ashbrook Nickell provides a glimpse into the psyche of a 95-year-old artist still grappling with his place in the world. Tension is palpable in the oeuvre of this […]
Posted inJune 9, 2014: Border Out of Control
Thumbs up and still breathing
Ahead of the Flaming Front: A Life on FireJerry D. Mathes II221 pages, softcover: $17.95.Caxton Press, 2013. Jerry D. Mathes’ second nonfiction book, Ahead of the Flaming Front, portrays the day-to-day life of a wildland firefighter. With a poet’s sense of language, Mathes describes his experiences as a rookie, gaining knowledge as he rises through […]
Posted inMay 26, 2014: The Great Gun Rights Divide
Book Review: The Black Place: Two Seasons
The Black Place: Two Seasonsphotographs by Walter W. Nelson,essay by Douglas Preston108 pages, clothbound: $45. Museum of New Mexico Press, 2014 In the 1930s, while driving through northwest New Mexico, artist Georgia O’Keeffe stumbled upon a remote, uninhabited landscape she dubbed “The Black Place” – tall hills of layered sediment, coated in brown and black […]
Posted inMay 26, 2014: The Great Gun Rights Divide
The path of the imagination
Conversations with Barry Lopez: Walking the Path of Imagination William E. Tydeman208 pages, softcover: $19.95.University of Oklahoma Press, 2013. For 40 years now, Barry Lopez has been at the center of the national and international conversation about social justice, and the fate of humanity and the Earth. In Conversations with Barry Lopez, the National Book […]
Posted inMay 12, 2014: Parks for All?
Backcountry memoir
Yellowstone Has TeethMarjane Ambler223 pages, $16.95.Riverbend Publishing, 2013. Cindy Mernin puts it bluntly: “Paradise isn’t for sissies!” she says, recalling the 14 years she spent as a ranger’s wife at Yellowstone National Park. In particular, as she tells author Marjane Ambler, the winters weren’t for sissies. The couple had moved there in the early 1970s, […]
Posted inMay 12, 2014: Parks for All?
Not fade away
Monument Road:A NovelCharlie Quimby365 pages, softcover: $16.95.Torrey House Press, 2013. Rancher Leonard Self is the type of elderly man who keeps “his shades drawn, his talk necessary, his actions to the problem at hand.” In the wake of his wife Inetta’s death, he’s been winnowing his ranch goods, his farmhouse, his life itself, succumbing to […]
Posted inMay 12, 2014: Parks for All?
Rock Art of the Grand Canyon Region
Rock Art of the Grand Canyon RegionDon D. Christensen, Jerry Dickey, and Steven M. Freers,248 pages, softcover:$24.95.Sunbelt Publications, Inc., 2013 Hiking the Grand Canyon is a journey through geologic time: The pink sedimentary layers, the limestone left by antediluvian seas, and the river-carved gorge are stunning reminders of our planet’s age. But as Rock Art […]
Posted inApril 28, 2014: Two-Wheel Revolution
Embracing parched ground
All the Land to Hold UsRick Bass322 pages, hardcover: $25.Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013. Rick Bass’ fourth novel, All the Land to Hold Us, focuses on human desire and – like the Montana writer’s many previous books – our relationship with the natural world. Richard is a geologist who reads rock layers to find oil, fossils […]
Posted inApril 28, 2014: Two-Wheel Revolution
Minidoka: An American Concentration Camp by Teresa Tamura
Minidoka: An American Concentration Camp Teresa Tamura, 305 pages, hardcover: $27.95. Caxton Press, 2013 In the wake of the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an order forcing the West Coast’s entire Japanese and Japanese American population to relocate to internment camps. Photojournalist Teresa Tamura, a third-generation Japanese American, tells the […]
Posted inApril 28, 2014: Two-Wheel Revolution
Shady dealings in the desert
SunlandDon Waters200 pages, hardcover:$25.95.University of Nevada Press, 2013. Sid Dulaney leaves his cheating girlfriend behind in Massachusetts and returns home to Tucson in Sunland, Oregon writer Don Waters’ hilarious first novel. Sid had worked as an itinerant teacher, but finds himself jobless in Tucson, where he spends his time looking after his beloved grandmother, Nana. […]