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 […]
Inform to Inflame?
Posted inSeptember 15, 2014: Books & Essays
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 […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 2014: Books & Essays
How my Californian father adapted to Utah
He found solace in growing fruit trees, but never quite made the Beehive state his home.
Posted inSeptember 15, 2014: Books & Essays
High Country News has a new website!
A timeline of hcn.org since it launched in 1995.
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
Encouraging more ‘nerds of color’
A conversation with L.A. writer Jervey Tervalon.
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
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
Best little bookstores of the West
Plus, readers’ favorite books about the region.
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
An author’s West of dreams and nightmares
Malcolm Brooks mingles romanticism with pragmatic realities.
Posted inSeptember 15, 2014: Books & Essays
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 […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 2014: Books & Essays
A new century with carnivores
Learning to see predators as companions, not competition.
Posted inArticles
Best little bookstores of the West
Plus, readers’ favorite books about the region.
Posted inSeptember 15, 2014: Books & Essays
Forgetting we live in the desert
Rafael de Grenade on tough landscapes, writing as inquiry and climate change.
Posted inArticles
Rural and small town employment still lags
Metro areas are bouncing back from the Great Recession more quickly.
Posted inArticles
Fur flies over Montana bobcat farm
Will animal rights activists keep a bobcat farmer from setting up shop in Montana?
Posted inArticles
Sweeping new rule for Alaska’s predator control
Federal versus state wildlife politics get even hotter.
Posted inArticles
Former governor Tony Knowles on Alaska’s predator policies
During his 1994 to 2002 tenure, former Democratic Alaska governor Tony Knowles implemented non-lethal — albeit expensive — ways to control predator populations in Alaska: Instead of shooting wolves from helicopters, for example, he relocated and sterilized packs that preyed on the caribou herds Alaskans relied on for food. Since he’s left office, though, the […]