A trio of new books take a look at Abbey’s mixed legacy on environment, gender and immigration.
Books
Posted inJune 27, 2016: The New Advocates
See the vanishing rest stops of the American West
A review of “The Last Stop” and a look at iconic roadside waypoints.
Posted inJune 13, 2016: Water to Dust
Photos: Underwater wilderness in the Pacific Northwest
A review of David Hall’s “Beneath Cold Seas”
Posted inJune 13, 2016: Water to Dust
The lost in canyon country
A new book recounts the many mysterious disappearances in the Western desert.
Posted inMay 30, 2016: Trial by Fire
Photos: Three years with New Mexico’s Hispanic communities
A photographer’s nostalgic look back at time spent with Nuevomexicanos.
Posted inMay 30, 2016: Trial by Fire
“A history of subversion”: An excerpt from Terry Tempest Williams’ latest book
“César E. Chávez National Monument” from The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks.
Posted inMay 16, 2016: Grizzly Face-Off
Photos: Inside the controversial sport of coyote coursing
This subset of coyote hunting involves trained dogs and is relatively uncommon in the West.
Posted inMay 16, 2016: Grizzly Face-Off
Past and present fauna
Writers bear witness to the “Age of Loneliness,” in the midst of a mass extinction.
Posted inMay 2, 2016: The Gold King Reckoning
In a dead-end prison town, a fraught journey home
A first-time novelist follows a quiet Montana man in the wake of grief.
Posted inMay 2, 2016: The Gold King Reckoning
Meet one of the great forgotten Western painters
Frank Mechau, who died in 1946 at age 42, saw the West through an unusual lens.
Posted inMay 2, 2016: The Gold King Reckoning
The absurdist Western
It’s worth following the twists and turns of Robert Garner McBrearty’s The Western Lonesome Society.
Posted inApril 4, 2016: A Land Divided
A photographer turns his lens on small-town bliss
A new exhibit in Denver, Colorado, looks at happiness in the rural West, focusing on Bliss, Idaho.
Posted inApril 4, 2016: A Land Divided
Menace at the edge of sanctuary
In “The Animals,” a wildlife rescuer faces his ugly past.
Posted inApril 4, 2016: A Land Divided
Where hope lingers like sagebrush on the wind
In his latest collection of Western tales, Percival Everett searches for the good in range life.
Posted inMarch 21, 2016: Making Sense of Malheur
Crime and grit: A retrospective collection from the don of Chicano noir
An uneven but often rewarding collection from one of the West’s masterful storytellers.
Posted inMarch 21, 2016: Making Sense of Malheur
Missoula’s rape problem
Jon Krakauer’s latest book explores a flawed justice system that fails victims.
Posted inMarch 7, 2016: The Parks You Don't Know
The beautiful wilds of national parks
Review of “The National Parks: An American Legacy,” by Ian Shive.
Posted inMarch 7, 2016: The Parks You Don't Know
In an era of change, a new chapter for the National Park Service
Two new books offer an invitation to the parks — and an argument for their existence.
Posted inFebruary 22, 2016: Fractured
How the wild Northern Rockies were saved — and who led the way
A new book looks at the ordinary citizens who fought for wilderness designations.
Posted inFebruary 22, 2016: Fractured
The time of painful impossibilities
A reading by U.S. poet laureate Juan Felipe Herrera.