Whatever sustainable economy emerges from a century and a half of raid, attempted settlement, mistaken development, and incorrigible optimism, we will have our West, our several Wests. They will continue to be the most spectacular and most fragile part of the United States. They will continue to provide a meager living and a wonderful like to those who will submit to western conditions. The frontier from which they all began will go on, too, changing and molding and sandpapering the responses of the people.
What we have in Courtney White's book is a recording of one passing phase of that frontier. And what a pleasure it is to see the real Wests captured in their flow! What a reassurance it is to see the Wests recorded in their living reality, instead of getting another view of someone being cut off at the pass in the Alabama Hills of the Kanab Desert, shooting wildly with both hands from guns that never need re-loading.
