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256 Western American Literature The values of the Basin, according to Ehrlich, crystallize quickly. People are strong on scruples but tenderhearted about quirky behavior. It is a place, she writes, which is “darkened only by the small-mindedness that seals people in. Men become hermits; women go mad.” Ehrlich highlights her book with piercing images of the sheeptown of Lovell, the Basin’s fierce summers and winters, the fading Indian customs, and the details of losing a lover and gaining a husband. She is a keen watcher of symbols and the harmony between man, animal, and the land, and writes only about events that have truly changed her life. JANET BENNION CANNON Utah State University This isDinosaur: Echo Park Country and Its Magic Rivers. Edited by Wallace Stegner. (Boulder: Roberts Rinehart, 1985. 93 pages, $24.95 hardcover, $8.95 paper.) This book, first published in 1955 by Alfred Knopf, figured prominently in the great Echo Park controversy of 1954-1955, when Dinosaur National Monument was threatened with two Bureau of Reclamation dams that would have dramatically altered the primitive setting of that spectacular region. It is reprinted now with a new foreword by Wallace Stegner, a note from the publisher of the new edition, and many new illustrations, but it retains the handsome appearance of the original Knopf edition. The book was, as Stegner points out in his new foreword, both a clarion call to defenders of the monument (copies of the first edition were sent to all Congressmen) and an evocation of the attractions and values of Dinosaur National Monument. As both, it was a success, and Stegner and the publisher of the new edition hope it will once again serve its dual purpose; the monu­ ment is once again threatened, this time by dams upstream that would radic­ ally alter the streamflows in the monument, thus degrading primitive aquatic and riparian ecosystems. Stegner proposes, with some force, that the monu­ ment be raised to national park status, rightly supposing that the change in classification would heighten public interest and concern. This is Dinosaur was written by a team of naturalists, conservationists, and western writers, and every chapter remains vivid and enjoyable after thirty years: Stegner on human settlement and exploration, Eliot Blackwater on geology, Olaus Murie and Joseph Penfold on natural history, Robert Lister on Native Americans, Otis Marston on river running past and present, David Bradley on touring the Monument, and Alfred Knopf on the meaning of the national park idea. No attempt was made to update any of these chapters, and indeed very little would have been necessary even had such changes been appropriate. It is just as well to read this one in its original form, both as an excellent introduction to the Monument and as a classic of environ­ mentalist publishing. Reviews 257 The passage of time reveals perceptual changes, however. Murie and Penfold, writing in 1955, speak hopefully of plans for dams at Cross Mountain and Juniper—the dams that Stegner now fears—because such dams might improve the fishing in the Monument by clearing the water of much silt. Since those days, aquatic ecosystems have gained our respect enough so that keeping (and appreciating) them undisturbed is more important than making them more productive of certain preferred game fish. But that does not reduce the book’s value, or the utility of a reprint at this time. This is Dinosaur should always be in print as a reminder of an extraordinarily important episode in American environmental history, and as a celebration of of a little-appreciated national treasure. PAUL SCHULLERY Livingston, Montana Owen Wister: Chronicler of the West, Gentleman of the East. By Darwin Payne. (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1985. 377 pages, $24.95.) The dust jacket of Darwin Payne’sbook depicts a young dandy taking his ease in a wooden chair. He is impeccably, even daintily, dressed in a tailored dark suit cut to emphasize his lean, masculine physique. His hands, below spotless shirt cuffs, seem carelessly but ostentatiously displayed to show the absence of callouses, broken fingernails, or other signs of toil. His carefully trimmed beard and moustache, set off by a high collar and elegant cravat, are neither...

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