Magazine
October 29, 2007
This special issue focuses on books and essays that help us understand the complex, chaotic West.
Feature
Longtime hitchhiker Dev Carey tells Michelle Nijhuis about
some of his best – and worst – adventures on Western
highways.
David Oates ranges from the Sierra Nevada to
Aix-en-Provence as he considers the particular qualities that make
a place worth living in.
Editor's Note
This special issue focuses on books and essays that help
us understand the complex, chaotic West.
Essays
Peter Chilson ponders the parallel fates of two lovely and
ravaged lands: The Southwest desert in America and the West Coast
of Africa.
Conversation
Laura Paskus interviews Western intellectual, activist and
writer Rebecca Solnit.
News
Latino writer Luis Alberto Urrea talks about the border
and remembers the women in his family who inspired him.
Book Reviews
A list of the most intriguing current books by Western
authors or on Western subjects.
Test your knowledge with a Western literary trivia
quiz.
Deirdre McNamer’s new novel, Red Rover, beautifully
captures the unromantic realism of Montana’s small
towns.
William Kittredge brings together new and selected essays
about life in the West in The Next Rodeo.
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.
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.
Brian Doyle recommends the best reads about the Pacific
Northwest, with particular emphasis on his home state,
Oregon.
The Western novel is not entirely dead; it has simply
changed a great deal since the glory days of Zane Grey.
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
- Mark York on Tribes win one fight, lose another in pipeline protest
- Greg Arnold on New allegations of sexual harassment in Yosemite, Yellowstone
- Sophia Bogner on Tribes win one fight, lose another in pipeline protest
- Carolyn Poissant on Top 10 reasons not to move to Bozeman
- G M Ferguson on An electric-power giant is poised to fail
