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Recent Posts
- On Randall K. Wilson’s “A Place Called Yellowstone”: Award-Winning History of Yellowstone National Park
- On Candice Millard’s “River of Doubt” and “River of the Gods”: Bugs, Snakes, and Disease Aplenty
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- Rachel McAdams film “Send Help” (2026) Makes Comic Gold Out of “Survivor” and “Alone” Audition Videos
- “The Wiggle Room”: A Short Story
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Category Archives: books
News On the Cormac McCarthy Front: Baby Eater No. 2 Speaks! Plus a New, Original Screenplay by CM
So for all the Cormac McCarthy fans out there, of which I am a most enthusiastic one, here’s an odd bit of info that just fell into my lap about the film version of The Road (2009). Before I saw … Continue reading
Posted in books, books/film, Film, The West, writing
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Reading Nicholas Carr's "The Shallows" Offline, amidst a White Christmas
So between wrapping zebra puppets and trees with colored lights, I’ve been reading Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows while living offline, which is an interesting contrast. He basically argues that our internet use is changing the way our brains work, and … Continue reading
Posted in books, Social Networking, Weird Science
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On Nicholas Carr's "The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains"
So in between dressing up stuffed animal rabbits as Rapunzel and noticing that leopard-skin tights, boots, and earmuffs seem to be popular among mallrats, I’m reading Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (2010). It’s … Continue reading
Posted in books, Education, Weird Science, writing
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On Stuart Dybek's "Saint Stuart" and Kent Haruf's "Benediction": Books to Come From Two of Our Best Writers
So last week I had the good fortune of overseeing the visit to our campus and fiction reading by Stuart Dybek, one of the finest contemporary American fiction writers of all. Dybek is known as something of a “writer’s writer,” but … Continue reading
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My Short Story, "The Lives of Gofers," in The Superstition Review
So I have a short story titled “The Lives of Gofers” out today in an online literary magazine, The Superstition Review, set in a hardscrabble Colorado. It’s available for all to read at this url: http://superstitionreview.asu.edu/n8/ This fall I also … Continue reading
Posted in books, The West, writing
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On Thomas Friedman's "Hot, Flat, and Crowded 2.0": A Disturbing Vision of the Future
So I must first confess that I am NOT a Thomas Friedman fan, which I think makes my enthusiasm more authentic for his nonfiction book Hot, Flat, and Crowded 2.0: Why We Need a Green Revolution—And How It Can Renew … Continue reading
Posted in books, Climate Change, Politics
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On Paul Gilding's "The Great Disruption," With a Nod to Eugene Linden's "The Future in Plain Sight"
So I’m a sucker for ‘big vision’ books about the future and the myriad problems we face with climate change and resource depletion, and right now I’m reading Paul Gilding’s The Great Disruption. It manages to be at once peppy … Continue reading
Posted in books, Climate Change, The West
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On the Illegal Immigration Debate, Tim Egan's Savvy Op-Ed, and How It Appears in Novels
So Tim Egan has a blistering attack on the scapegoating of Latinos in the latest Republican presidential debates, and the whole issue of illegal immigration and migrant workers, here: I grew up in a predominantly Latino area of South Texas … Continue reading
Posted in books, Politics, The West
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On Prophecies in "The Bird Saviors": Dust Storms in Texas
So my forthcoming novel, The Bird Saviors—due out in (what’s left of) bookstores in May/June—opens with a dust storm in southern Colorado, and when I began writing it some five years ago, I imagined it set in a fuzzy ‘near … Continue reading
Posted in books, Climate Change, Politics, The West
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Seven Billion Humans & Jared Diamond's "Collapse"
So various news organizations are reporting that our planet is now home to this mythical number of seven billion humans, mythical in that we don’t know that for sure, but it’s a good guess, and all its implications. I still … Continue reading
Posted in books, Climate Change
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