This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption are Ruining the American West
by Christopher Ketcham
Ketcham gets it right (9/27/2019)
There are a great many ugly truths about federal land management in the American West, and This Land exposes a lot of them. It's easy to get fooled by the sophisticated and self-serving propaganda put out by the exploitive industries that make their profits from federal public lands, and degrade and destroy those lands in the process. Indeed, many independent journalists over the years have failed to exercise critical thinking when presented with false narratives: Ranchers are good stewards of the land, the oil industry really cares about sage grouse conservation, exploiting public lands is the cornerstone of rural western economies. Ketcham doesn't fall for it, and instead does his own homework. The result is an incisive look into the corruption that riddles federal land management, and has done so for decades under administrations of both parties. Get the book, and learn more about what's going on with your public lands.