Ivan Doig’s Book Bag: Five Favorite Books on the American West
Ivan Doig, the great chronicler of the Montana landscape whose
new novel is Sweet Thunder, picks his favorite books on the
American West.  The American West as Living Space By Wallace
Stegner  Once when I asked a prominent historian what he thought
of the many writings by Stegner, novelist and English-department
star at Harvard and Stanford, about the background and the West,
he didn’t hesitate: “He hits the nail on the head every time,
damn him.” This trio of essays, a mere 86 pages of text
delivered as a set of university lectures, is a marvel—composed
nearly 30 years before fracking, pine-beetle kill of forests
from Colorado to British Columbia, and unprecedented fire
seasons with suburbs on the front line—of exploring his great
theme of the country West of the rain-halting 98th meridian, the
clash of its ecologies, and its cultures.  Monte Walsh By Jack
Schaefer  Not Shane? Why? Schaefer’s lesser-known but more valid
Western novel is big, lon