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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
- More Alone than “Alone”: On Adam Shoalts’s “Vanished Beyond the Map: The Mystery of Lost Explorer Hubert Darrell” (2025)
- 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: The West
The Heartland Institute's War on Science, Michael Mann's "The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars," and E.O. Wilson's "The Social Conquest of Earth"
So I’ve been sick the last week with a travel bug, which I suspected I caught in a St. Louis restaurant via an infected cook, a la Gwyneth Paltrow in last year’s bird flu epidemic movie Contagion, but I’m alive … Continue reading
Posted in books/film, Climate Change, The West, writing
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Homage to Horace Greeley: "Go West, Young Man"—With a Sony Nex-7 Camera in Hand
So every year about this time I break camp and head west to Colorado, where I hole up to write and enjoy the mountains. That Horace Greeley quote has stayed with me ever since childhood, and I’m always longing for … Continue reading
Posted in Photography, The West, writing
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James Cameron's Metaphor of Climate Change as the 21st Century Iceberg to Our Big Oil Titanic, Plus a Shout-out to E.O. Wilson's new book "The Social Conquest of Earth" and the Coen Brothers classic "Barton Fink"
So I’m not exactly a huge fan of James Cameron films, full of over-the-top razzle-dazzle, some great images (such as the Titanic sinking, rising into the air and all the unfortunate passengers plummeting into the water) but enough bad melodrama … Continue reading
Posted in books, books/film, Climate Change, Film, Politics, The West, writing
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The Birds Are Dying: Or in the National Wildlife Refuge, It Looks Like We Need "The Bird Saviors"
So more depressing news in the climate change/Western drought world. It seems that persistent drought conditions are drying up wildlife refuges in California, reported here. My new novel, due out June 21st, is titled The Bird Saviors, and one of … Continue reading
Posted in books, Climate Change, Politics, The West, Uncategorized, Weird Science, writing
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Be Careful of What That Next Climate Might Look Like, and Reflections on David Keys's "Catastrophe: An Investigation Into the Origins of Modern Civilization"
So Thomas Friedman in Sunday’s NY Times had a good piece about the environmental factors at play in the so-called Arab Spring popular uprisings, here. This is an aspect of climate change that usually gets ignored—political instability. I think everyone … Continue reading
Posted in books, Climate Change, Politics, The West, Weird Science
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Colorado in Drought and Further Reflections on Michael Mann's "The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars," Or What's That Hot Breath on Our Necks? The Dry of Things To Come
So Michael Mann’s The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars is one of the best books that deals with both global warming/climate change and the politics surrounding it, especially the “despicable me” world of climate change deniers. I’ve read many … Continue reading
Posted in books, Climate Change, Politics, The West, Uncategorized, Weird Science
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On Reading Michael Mann's "The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars" As the Year Without a Winter Segues into a Freakishly Warm Spring
So I’m now reading Michael Mann’s book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, which is an inside look at the so-called “Climategate,” or perhaps more accurately the Right Wing/Big Oil Specious Attack on Climate Scientists. For those not familiar … Continue reading
Posted in books, Climate Change, Politics, The West, Weird Science
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Review of Noah Hawley's "The Good Father" in the Dallas Morning News
So here’s my review of Noah Hawley’s new novel, The Good Father, published Sunday in the Dallas Morning News (click the hyperlink ‘review’). I liked the novel, even if it’s ultimately a downer story, of a father searching for the … Continue reading
Further Reflections on Scenes Cut From the Film Version of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road," Or Films You Wish You Had Seen, and Some You Wish You Had Not
So being a diehard Cormac McCarthy fan (and more than just a little bit suspicious), I feel the hand of God or Fate or Providence in the fact that one of my students this semester was an actor (Baby Eater … Continue reading
Posted in Art, Bad TV, books, books/film, Film, The West, writing
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Guns & Bunkers: Or How to Enjoy "Doomsday Preppers" and the Truth About That Asteroid Crashing Into a Crater Near You
So the quirkiest angle of the success of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006) was that we could all recognize what Discovery Channel shows Cormac had been watching, once you realize that the mysterious cataclysm that has befallen the world is … Continue reading
Posted in Bad TV, books/film, Climate Change, Good TV, The West, Weird Science
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