In this diverse collection, some of the West's best-known writers, journalists, and leading social scientists explore the impacts of tourism and development on western communities and cultures, wild lands and national parks, and on our society's changing relationship to the land.

From New Mexico to Montana, many have embraced tourism as a sustainable economic alternative to the unpredictable cycles and heavy environmental costs of extractive industry. Others see a darker side to tourism: the selling of place, history, and cultural identity in exchange for low-wage employment in an increasingly urbanized, economically divided, and corporate-dominated social environment.

Although tourism is the focus of discussion, the wider issue is survival . . . of towns and peoples, of ways of life, of "the West."