Our annual Books & Essays special issue is out, packed with feature essays, author profiles, new books and a fall reading list.
Teaching aliens to talk
How global warming made me change my life.
Michelle Huneven writes about place, addiction and love
This California author examines lost years and life in the mountains.
A painter and writer uses her art to overcome trauma
Author profile of Japanese-American Lily Havey.
High Country News has a new website!
A timeline of hcn.org since it launched in 1995.
How my Californian father adapted to Utah
He found solace in growing fruit trees, but never quite made the Beehive state his home.
Incredible arrogance
Richard Manning’s “Idaho’s Sewer System” (HCN, 8/4/14) is the perfect sequel to Marc Reisner’s Cadillac Desert. Our hell-bent determination to dam every river in the West, even in high-desert landscapes where no one previously imagined farming, was simply the result of hubris. We did it because we could! Now, Big Ag, not content with reaping the rewards…
Inform to Inflame?
Your graphic story on the Snake River (HCN, 8/4/14) provides a chilling overview of the impacts of industrial agriculture on one of America’s most important river systems. While well written, Manning’s article left me wondering whether the goal was to inform or inflame. The dominant ag systems in southern Idaho are surely not sustainable in…
A new century with carnivores
Learning to see predators as companions, not competition.
Masters of Dig: A tour of authorial abodes
Visiting the homes of my favorite writers
But wait, there’s more
Lit-touring in California and beyond.
Ag water in context
I believe it is important to consider the term “consumptive water use” in this context (“How much water goes into your food?” HCN, 4/18/14). This short piece by Sarah Tory provides some insightful information, but perhaps casts a shadow on an industry that constantly must explain and defend itself, often to no avail. Irrigated agriculture…
An author’s West of dreams and nightmares
Malcolm Brooks mingles romanticism with pragmatic realities.
Photographs of America’s pronghorn antelope
Review of “A Pronghorn Year” by Dick Kettlewell.
Beauty and chaos, standing together
Review of ‘The Carry Home; Lessons from the American Wilderness’ by Gary Ferguson.
Polis Is This
My wife and I both voted for the five-year moratorium on fracking in Fort Collins, Colorado, which was subsequently, disappointingly, overturned by the Colorado court system. We have watched as this issue has evolved, and we come down on the side of Jared Polis, a Democrat whose district includes Fort Collins (“Fracking politicians,” HCN, 4/18/14). The old-fashioned…
Best little bookstores of the West
Plus, readers’ favorite books about the region.
See you in October!
It’s time to slip out of the HCN office while the hiking’s still good. We publish 22 issues a year, so we’re skipping an issue in mid-September. Look for us in your mailbox around Oct. 13; meanwhile, visit hcn.org for fresh news, analysis and commentary. Charles Bowden passes We’re sad to note that author…
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:
Conservation wisdom from the radical center
Review of ‘Stitching the West Back Together: Conservation of Working Landscapes.’
The art of adaptation
“Life finds a way,” Michael Crichton wrote in his 1990 novel Jurassic Park. He was imagining how resurrected dinosaurs, supposedly sterile, could start breeding on their own, but the quote expresses a fundamental truth. As the planet’s climate changes, life changes with it. The rapidly warming Arctic has forced polar bears, which normally hunt seals,…
Encouraging more ‘nerds of color’
A conversation with L.A. writer Jervey Tervalon.
The bloody, brave beginnings of the Northwest
Review of ‘The Bully of Order’ by Brian Hart.
Fall is for reading
HCN editors’ pick of the best new fiction and non-fiction.
Tragedy, coincidence and patterns
Review of “Downwind: A People’s History of the Nuclear West” by Sarah Alisabeth Fox.
Wacky Burning Man antics, a pop-up town and more
Mishaps and mayhem from around the region.
Forgetting we live in the desert
Rafael de Grenade on tough landscapes, writing as inquiry and climate change.
