Synopses & Reviews
An atlas for our times that makes sense of the fast-paced transformation of the American West.
The West. Americans hold dearly to old ideas of it as a unique, wild place of majestic space, ranching and mining, small-town life, and opportunity.
And so it can still be -- but rarely. The West's central reality nowadays is that it is new.
This newness has never been so well presented in this book's forty-six full-color, three-dimensional, computer-generated maps; its two brilliant essays; its informative sidebars; its boxed information (for example, how the first seven wolves introduced into Yellowstone died); and its dozens of charts and graphs, highlighting:
-- The New West's fortunes now ride on tourism and a postindustrial, high-tech economy.
-- The West is America's fastest urbanizing region.
-- Rodeos, dude ranches, and open range now abide with sprawling cities, ski resorts, plugged-in telecommuters, micro-breweries, and mountain biking meccas.
-- Illustrations show old Western battles taking new forms -- who owns what land? who controls what water rights? and how much development is too much?
-- Gold-medal trout streams, nuclear-waste sites, jet ports, regional writers, reintroduced wolves, Rocky Mountain and Sierra Nevadan economies ...
All are here -- and much more -- in this valuable, beautiful, and eye-opening examination of life as it is now in our Western states.
Description
4050 Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
Table of Contents
ch 1. A region defined -- ch. 2. Infrastructure for new West -- ch. 3. Water for the new West -- ch. 4. People in the new West -- ch. 5. New West lifestyles -- ch. 6. The ugly West -- ch. 7. Visions for the next West.