In Blithe Tomato, California farmer Mike Madison writes about whatever strikes his fancy: neighborhood dogs, old tractors, and what it’s like to tangle with the local gophers for control of his tulips and olive trees. (He admits to losing 25 percent of his net income to the pests.) Madison’s collection of short essays makes it […]
Book Reviews
Posted inJuly 24, 2006: Taking Liberties
A world built on groundwater
The entire West is headed for a much drier future. Ogallala Blue provides a good sense of the bleak realities of a life of scarcity. Author William Ashworth focuses on the Great Plains states, which have for decades thwarted a notorious lack of rain by reaching into the massive Ogallala Aquifer. Today, those states grow […]
Posted inJuly 24, 2006: Taking Liberties
Dust in the wind
On Sept. 14, 1930, a strange dirt cloud swirled out of Kansas into the Texas Panhandle. Weathermen dismissed it as an oddity, but it marked the beginning of the worst long-term environmental disaster the United States has ever known — the Dust Bowl. That bleak period is chronicled in The Worst Hard Time, Timothy Egan’s […]
Posted inJune 26, 2006: The Tamarisk Hunter
Climate-change clues — in tropical glaciers
To understand why nearly every climate expert on the planet believes our hundred-year binge on fossil fuels has set the stage for today’s wrenching weather disruptions, you have to take the long view, looking beyond a single hurricane or heat wave. If you do that, the news gets worse. And if you really wish to […]
Posted inJune 26, 2006: The Tamarisk Hunter
Nuestra America
In recent months, millions of Latinos have taken to the streets over immigration — more than 50,000 in Denver alone. Hector Tobar’s Translation Nation: Defining a New American Identity in the Spanish-Speaking United States is a thoughtful and wide-ranging examination of the people who have come from the Americas to a country that calls itself […]
Posted inJune 26, 2006: The Tamarisk Hunter
A season of love — and secrets
When an unexpected teaching vacancy arises in the town’s one-room schoolhouse, Morrie steps in. His pedagogy is unorthodox and his résumé dubious, but he ignites the minds of his pupils. Morrie’s finest teaching moment comes when he organizes the children to honor the arrival of Halley’s Comet with a harmonica concert for their astonished parents. […]
Posted inJune 26, 2006: The Tamarisk Hunter
One war that’s worth the fight
In Walking It Off, Doug Peacock covers a lot of ground. Having survived the Vietnam War as a Green Beret medic, Peacock writes of himself at age 27: “Wounded but dedicated, I was a committed whacko, a fanatic willing to go the distance at the drop of the hat, a warrior who didn’t believe in […]
Posted inJune 26, 2006: The Tamarisk Hunter
Waiting for the tide
In The Highest Tide, Jim Lynch’s debut novel, 13-year-old Miles O’Malley — Squid Boy to his friends — discovers freaks of marine biology while beach-combing near his home. He also encounters sex, death, divorce, and the bizarre world of media stardom along the way. A boy genius who’s abnormally short for his age, Miles gets […]
Posted inJune 12, 2006: The Perpetual Growth Machine
Trading goods, and stories, on the reservation
In the 1920s and ’30s, many Navajo Indians traded for flour and coffee at Will Evans’ Shiprock Trading Company. Among them were survivors of the infamous Long Walk, the 300-mile forced march that sent the tribe into temporary exile in eastern New Mexico in 1864. When yet another battle-scarred Navajo limped into the post, Evans […]
Posted inJune 12, 2006: The Perpetual Growth Machine
Making room for wolves
What do you get when you ask 50 people — only a handful of whom have actually ever seen a wolf — to write about new ways to “think about (wolves), imagine them, and welcome them home”? There are the inevitable odes to friendly wolf-dogs, and some wild stuff about kids suckled by volcanoes. But […]
Posted inJune 12, 2006: The Perpetual Growth Machine
The noisy democracy of the West
The problem seems unavoidable: Historian Peter Decker wants to write about what he knows and loves, his adopted home in rural Ouray County, Colo. But his passionate prose is sure to spark more visits from outsiders, perhaps helping to destroy the very isolation that he cherishes. The first edition of Old Fences, New Neighbors appeared […]
Posted inMay 29, 2006: 'Clinging Hopelessly to the Past'
Dinosaur bones and dastardly deeds
It’s a sad, sick world, as the daily papers, broadcast news and even High Country News report, what with droughts, drying aquifers and global warming. Sometimes one yearns for a bit of escapist fun. Douglas Preston offers up a delicious dose in his latest novel, Tyrannosaur Canyon. A page-turner set in the desert Southwest, it’s […]
Posted inMay 29, 2006: 'Clinging Hopelessly to the Past'
Saving water from the sky
Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands should come with a warning: Read it only at home, with tools handy, because what’s inside inspires action. Tucson author Brad Lancaster explores strategies to “plant” rainwater where it falls. He should know: Lancaster harvests more than 100,000 gallons of rainwater a year, transforming his one-eighth acre of urban desert into […]
Posted inMay 29, 2006: 'Clinging Hopelessly to the Past'
The life of an enigmatic seabird
One of the great North American ornithological mysteries in recent history was solved not by a scientist or a birder, but by a tree-trimmer. Working in an ancient Douglas fir in California’s Big Basin Redwoods State Park, Hoyt Foster began to lop off a limb 148 feet above ground when suddenly he was confronted by […]
Posted inMay 15, 2006: The Immigrant's Trail
Finding hope in a new land
Mexican-born author Rose Castillo Guilbault first saw America from the window of a Greyhound bus. The 5-year-old sat next to her divorced mother, Maria Luisa, who had taken a distant cousin’s advice to heart: Head to El Norte. “Get out of this cesspool. It will pull you down and drown you. You’re still young. Start […]
Posted inMay 15, 2006: The Immigrant's Trail
It ain’t easy getting old
Cormac McCarthy discards his bitter nostalgia to tell a story set along the border in the 1980s.
Posted inMay 15, 2006: The Immigrant's Trail
The puzzle of plate tectonics
Few people forget their first visit to the Grand Canyon. The chasm does not reveal itself until you are nearly at its edge. And then it appears, over a mile deep, with a barely visible Colorado River winding through its heart. Geologist and writer James Powell was as awestruck as anyone on his first-time visit. […]
Posted inMay 1, 2006: Magic Valley Uprising
Ode to a very hot spot
Despite its sensationalistic cover, John Soennichsen’s book, Live! From Death Valley, is a serious look at this unpredictable corner of California’s Mojave Desert. That’s not to say the author doesn’t have fun with his subject: He dives into the area’s bizarre geological history and its eccentric local characters, and tells plenty of self-deprecating stories about […]
Posted inMay 1, 2006: Magic Valley Uprising
A season of change
At the beginning of winter a few years ago, nature writer Bruce Stutz lay in a hospital bed in New York, recovering from heart surgery. Eight months later, seeking the same renewal that nature experiences each year, Stutz set out on a trek from New York to Alaska to mark the coming of spring — […]
Posted inMay 1, 2006: Magic Valley Uprising
Ingredients: History, preservatives
Preserving Western History is “the first college reader to address public history in the American West.” “Public history,” explains the introduction, means history presented outside classrooms. All of us consume public history, by visiting parks, watching TV shows and reading magazines. Behind the scenes, even the most basic presentation of history can involve slicing, dicing, […]