The Pacific Northwest correspondent for the New York Times and a first-rate storyteller, Egan writes with humor and a gimlet eye, proving himself a reliable guide to a wildly diverse region on the cusp of old and new. --Shawn Carkonen

Product Description
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

Winner of the Mountains and Plains Book Seller's Association Award

"Sprawling in scope. . . . Mr. Egan uses the past powerfully to explain and give dimension to the present." --The New York Times

"Fine reportage . . . honed and polished until it reads more like literature than journalism." --Los Angeles Times

"They have tried to tame it, shave it, fence it, cut it, dam it, drain it, nuke it, poison it, pave it, and subdivide it," writes Timothy Egan of the West; still, "this region's hold on the American character has never seemed stronger." In this colorful and revealing journey through the eleven states west of the 100th meridian, Egan, a third-generation westerner, evokes a lovely and troubled country where land is religion and the holy war between preservers and possessors never ends.

Egan leads us on an unconventional, freewheeling tour: from America's oldest continuously inhabited community, the Ancoma Pueblo in New Mexico, to the high kitsch of Lake Havasu City, Arizona, where London Bridge has been painstakingly rebuilt stone by stone; from the fragile beauty of Idaho's Bitterroot Range to the gross excess of Las Vegas, a city built as though in defiance of its arid environment. In a unique blend of travel writing, historical reflection, and passionate polemic, Egan has produced a moving study of the West: how it became what it is, and where it is going.

"The writing is simply wonderful. From the opening paragraph, Egan seduces the reader. . . . Entertaining, thought provoking."
--The Arizona Daily Star Weekly

"A western breeziness and love of open spaces shines through Lasso the Wind. . . . The writing is simple and evocative."
--The Economist

After an introduction that takes place at a conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, he begins his journey in New Mexico and Arizona, then moves northward, swinging through Colorado, Montana, and the Great Basin states, ending in California. There is much about cowboys, cattlemen, and Native Americans. We also visit London Bridge at Lake Havasu, an ostrich ranch outside Denver, the pit left behind by the Anaconda copper mining company in Butte, the casinos of Las Vegas, and the site of an appearance of the Virgin of Guadalupe on the back of a road sign in Sunnyside, Washington. There are accounts of fishing in the Bitterroots of Idaho, river rafting on the American River above Sacramento, and hunting for Anasazi petroglyphs in the canyons of the Escalante in Utah.

Meanwhile history comes alive from a colorful and sometimes jaundiced perspective in stories of the conquistador Don Juan de Onate's conquest of the Indians at Acoma in New Mexico, the massacre of a wagon train of settlers by Mormons at Mountain Meadows, Utah, in the 1860s, and the California Gold Rush. There are historical figures who make vivid appearances, including Theodore Roosevelt, John Muir, Lewis and Clark, and Brigham Young. The most affecting story is the author's retelling of Chief Joseph and the fate of the Nez Perce.

Egan gives us a whirlwind trip across a vast area of the U.S. He touches on themes that are common in books about the west -- the follies and vanities of those who have defied the realities of its arid climate, laid waste to natural resources, decimated its wildlife, and attempted to eradicate its native populations. While there is much to lament in what it reveals of the devastation brought by settlement of the West, it also seeks earnestly for signs that the spirit of the West still survives and can eventually thrive.

I highly recommend this book as an addition to any bookshelf of Western nonfiction. As a companion volume, I also recommend Frank Clifford's "The Backbone of the World," which recounts a similar journey by a journalist across the states that lie along the Continental Divide.


A new natural history   November 20, 2002
 11 out of 11 found this review helpful

I am an Australian who has never been to the United States, so I might be coming at this book from a different perspective to many.

I thought the writing was wonderfully evocative, both in the positive descriptions (eg. the Western landscape) and the negative descriptions (eg. the stupidity of cows). I got a real sense of the beauty of the land.

I thought the social and political aspect of the book was also really interesting because it took a view of American history which doesn't assume that you know who Thomas Jefferson was, but still requires some intelligence from the reader. Rather than just rubbishing traditional Western lifestyles, Egan engages with and explores them. He then offers some possible future solutions which are interesting and seem practical.

I found the way Egan combined natural and political and social and demographic history into one whole comprehensible theory fantastic.


Egan gets to the point.   June 1, 2002
 7 out of 9 found this review helpful

Not until after I finished Eganys Lasso the Wind did I realize how fast the book went. Egan is the rare writer who can easily combine a meaningful and entertaining story. OK then a well-written story explains why the book went fast. Or maybe the fast pace is due the fact that Egan covers some 11 western states in the span of 250 pages. The bookys tempo seems to come from someone who lives in New York, New York. I wonder if Egan has been making too many trips to The New York Times corporate office to pitch stories to his editor. Its probably not a coincidence that the author takes advantage of the yno speed limitsy to rocket through a stretch of Montana, only to get the attention of a state trooper. Driving habits aside, Egan manages to get in touch with the heart of issues that are unique to the Western states. I enjoyed really getting to see these special places through his eyes. Throughout the book, Egan sees the West with a candid and objective eye, but always remains hopeful. An excerpt from the end of the book on California really depicts Eganys thinking of the West:

yBut every Westerner should look at Californiays story; as it turns out, it is their own history and the fount of most of their follies, a mirror across the Sierra. Radically altering the land, living on phony myths, ignoring the best features or trying to kill them. And it is Western glory in its own fine way: a new society, with a tolerance of fledgling souls, embracing the possible. What is different is that California has done it all faster, with more excess and greater consequence than any other Western state. To believe California is dead, then, is to believe that the West is dead, or soon will be. I cannot.y


Conventional Prejudice   February 14, 2000
 17 out of 39 found this review helpful

I received the book as a gift, but it only took me one chapter to wish I hadn't received it. I personally know something of what that chapter is about, and to my disappointment the author was not only inaccurate, shallow and unintelligent in his analysis, but he is solidly locked into the conventional prejudices one would expect, I suppose, from a writer for the N.Y. Times -- the typical liberal urbanite arrogance towards people who live on the land and work with their hands close to nature, people who produce the resources we depend on. The author thinks he is demolishing myths, but actually he succumbs to the latest trendy myths of his social set.