Suggestions from the Tattered Cover
Books – December 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
Denver’s Tattered Cover Book Store asked twelve Colorado authors, educators, and land agency workers: What books would you suggest to someone who wants to know more about the heritage, challenges, and wonders of life in the Mountain West?
Then the store published this list.
Duane A. Smith, professor of history at Fort Lewis College, and the author of Rocky Mountain Mining Camps (1967) and other Colorado history books, chose: Old Fences, New Neighbors by Peter Decker (University of Arizona Press, 1998); The Rockies by David Lavender (Harper & Row, 1968); Thomas Hornsby Ferril and the American West edited by Robert C. Baron, et al (Fulcrum, 1996); My Rocky Mountain Valley by James Grafton Rogers (Pruett, 1968); and A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains (University of Oklahoma, 1910).
Kim Langmaid, Executive Director of the Gore Range Natural Science School in Red Cliff picked: Reclaiming the Native Home of Hope: Community, Ecology, and the American West edited by Robert Keiter (University of Utah, 1998); Sierra Club Naturalist’s Guide to the Southern Rockies by Audrey DeLella Benedict (Sierra Club, 1991); Teewinot: A Year in the Teton Range by Jack Turner (St. Martin’s, 2000); Beyond the Aspen Grove by Ann H. Zwinger (Harper & Row, 1970); Mountain Dialogues by Frank Waters (Swallow Press, 1981).
John Fielder, photographer, selected: Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains by John C. Fremont (Narrative Press, 1845); and A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella Bird.
Sandra Dallas, novelist, columnist, and the author of Colorado Ghost Towns and Mining Camps (1985), and other local histories picked: Stampede to Timberline: The Ghost Towns and Mining Camps of Colorado by Muriel Sibell Wolle (Swallow Press, 1991); The Great Gates: The Story of the Rocky Mountain Passes by Marshall Sprague (Little Brown, 1964); Mountaineering in Colorado: The Peaks about Estes Park by Frederick Chapin (University of Nebraska, 1889); Roof of the Rockies: A History of Mountaineering in Colorado by William M. Bueler (Pruett, 1974); Colorado: Lost Places and Forgotten Words, photography by John Fielder (Westcliffe, 1989).
Richard L. Knight, professor of Forest, Rangeland, and Watershed Stewardship at Colorado State University, and the author and editor of numerous books, including Aldo Leopold and the Ecological Conscience (2001), chose: Sound of Mountain Water by Wallace Stegner (Doubleday, 1969); Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West by Wallace Stegner (Houghton Mifflin 1954); Rocky Mountain Divide: Selling and Saving the West by John B. Wright (University of Texas, 1993); Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West by Patricia Nelson Limerick (W.W. Norton, 1988).
Jeff Lee, director of the Rocky Mountain Land Library, and coordinator of the Rocky Mountain Land Series, picked: Land Above the Trees: A Guide to American Alpine Tundra by Ann H. Zwinger and Beatrice Willard (Harper & Row, 1972); Ute Indian Arts & Culture: From Prehistory to the New Millennium edited by William Wroth (Taylor Museum, 2000); Let the Cowboy Ride: Cattle Ranching in the American West by Paul F. Starrs (Johns Hopkins University, 1998); Fire on the Mountain: The True Story of the South Canyon Fire by John Maclean (William Morrow, 1999); Rocky Mountains: A Smithsonian Natural History Guide by Scott A. Elias (Smithsonian Institution, 2002).
Andrew Gulliford, director of the Center of Southwest Studies at Fort Lewis College, and the author of several books, including Sacred Objects and Sacred Places: Preserving Tribal Traditions (2000), selected: One Man’s West by David Lavender (Doubleday, 1977); Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner (Doubleday, 1971); Song of the Hammer and Drill: The Colorado San Juans, 1860-1914 by Duane A. Smith (University of Colorado, 1982); The Last War Trail: The Utes and the Settlement of Colorado by Robert Emmitt (University of Oklahoma, 1954); two novels by James Galvin: The Meadow (Holt, 1992) and Fencing the Sky (Holt, 1999).
Mark W. Williams, Fellow at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado, Boulder, picked: River Notes by Barry Lopez (Avon, 1979); Never Cry Wolf by Farley Mowat (Little Brown, 1963); The Yosemite by John Muir, with photographs by Galen Rowell (Sierra Club, 1989); Mountains of the Middle Kingdom: Exploring the High Peaks of China and Tibet by Galen Rowell (Sierra Club, 1984); My First Summer in the Sierra by John Muir (Houghton Mifflin, 1911)
SueEllen Campbell, professor of English at Colorado State University, and author of Bringing the Mountain Home (1996), chose: Peterson Field Guide to Rocky Mountain Wildflowers by Craighead, Craighead, and Davis (Houghton Mifflin, 1963); The Spell of the Rockies by Enos Mills (Houghton Mifflin, 1911); The Meadow by James Galvin, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella Bird; Forgotten Words, photography by John Fielder; Sierra Club Naturalist’s Guide to the Southern Rockies, by Audrey Benedict; Beyond the Aspen Grove by Anne Zwinger. “(And not to be restrained, SueEllen Campbell also gives an enthusiastic nod to Ed and Martha Quillen’s monthly magazine Colorado Central).”
Gene Reetz, Wetlands Team Leader for Region 8 of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, picked: Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs by Wallace Stegner (Random House, 1992); The American West as Living Space by Wallace Stegner (University of Michigan, 1987); This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind by Ivan Doig (Harcourt, 1978); English Creek by Ivan Doig (Atheneum, 1984); plus Wallace Stegner’s Sound of Mountain Water and Ann H. Zwinger ‘s Beyond the Aspen Grove.
Ann H. Zwinger, naturalist and author of numerous books, including the often-cited Beyond the Aspen Grove, picked: Great Surveys of the American West by Richard A. Bartlett (University of Oklahoma, 1962); Firearms, Traps and Tools of the Mountain Men by Carl P. Russell (Alfred A. Knopf, 1967); Letters of a Woman Homesteader by Elinore Pruitt Stewart (University of Nebraska, 1961); plus The Rockies by David Lavendar; and The Great Gates by Marshall Sprague.
Audrey DeLella Benedict, director of Cloud Ridge Naturalists, and author of Sierra Club Naturalist’s Guide to the Southern Rockies, chose: Annals of the Former World by John McPhee (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999); Crossing the Next Meridian: Land, Water, and the Future of the West by Charles Wilkinson (Island Press, 1992); The San Luis Valley: Land of the Six-Armed Cross by Virginia McConnell Simmons (University Press of Colorado, 1979); Forest Primeval: The Natural History of an Ancient Forest by Chris Maser (Oregon State University Press, 1989); and any books by David Armstrong, Peter Marchand, Ann Zwinger, or Robert Michael Pyle; plus Beyond the Hundredth Meridian by Wallace Stegner; and Beyond the Aspen Grove by Ann Zwinger.
ADDITIONAL ESSENTIAL MOUNTAIN TITLES from the shelves of the ROCKY MOUNTAIN LAND LIBRARY
Rocky Mountain National Park: A 100 Year Perspective by T.A. Barron and John Fielder (Westcliffe, 1995); To Walk in Wilderness: A Colorado Rocky Mountain Journal by T.A. Barron and John Fielder (Westcliffe, 1993); Shoshones: Sentinels of the Rockies by Virginia Trenholm (University of Oklahoma, 1964); Rocky Mountain Mining Camps by Duane A. Smith (Indiana University Press, 1967); High Country Cowboys: A History of Ranching in Western Colorado by Ken Reyher (Western Reflections, 2000); Boomtown Blues: Colorado Oil Shale 1885-1985 by Andrew Gulliford (University Press of Colorado, 1989);
Bringing the Mountain Home by SueEllen Campbell (University of Arizona, 1996); Peterson Field Guide to Animal Tracks by Olaus Murie (Houghton Mifflin, 1954); North American Elk: Ecology and Management by Dale Toweill (Smithsonian Institution, 2002); Ghost Grizzlies by David Petersen (Johnson Books, 1995); Rocky Mountain Futures: An Ecological Perspective edited by Jill Baron (Island Press, 2002);
Hard Places: Reading the Landscape of America’s Historic Mining Districts by Richard Francaviglia (University of Iowa, 1991); Cache La Poudre: The Natural History of a Rocky Mountain River by Mary & Howard Evans (University Press of Colorado, 1991); Song of the Alpine: The Rocky Mountain Tundra Through the Seasons by Joyce Gellhorn (Johnson Books, 2002); Rocky Mountain Mammals by David Armstrong (Rocky Mountain Nature Association, 1987);
An Illustrated Guide to the Mountain Stream Insects of Colorado by J.V. Ward, B.C. Kondratieff, and R.E. Zuellig (University Press of Colorado, 2002); The Granite Landscape: A Natural History of America’s Mountain Domes, from Acadia to Yosemite by Tom Wessels (Countryman Press, 2001); One Day at Teton Marsh by Sally Carrighar (Alfred Knopf, 1958); Enos Mills: Citizen of Nature by Alexander Drummond (University Press of Colorado, 1995);
Poets on the Peaks: Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen & Jack Kerouac in the Cascades by John Suiter (Counterpoint, 2002); High Sierra of California by Gary Snyder (Heyday Books, 2002); Virtual Rivers: Lessons from the Mountain Rivers of the Colorado Front Range by Ellen Wohl (Yale University Press, 2001); Enchantment and Exploitation: The Life and Hard Times of a New Mexico Mountain Range by William deBuys (University of New Mexico, 1985);
Shadow Mountain: A Memoir of Wolves, a Woman, and the Wild by Renee Askins (Doubleday, 2002); Good Neighbor Guidebook for Colorado by Nancy Greif & Erin Johnson (Johnson Books, 2000); A Life Well-Rooted: Women of Colorado’s Roaring Fork Valley by Meredith W. Ogilby (Hell Roaring Publishing, 2001); The Magnificent Mountain Women: Adventures in the Colorado Rockies by Janet Robertson (University of Nebraska Press, 1990).
