Discovered Country: Tourism and Survival in the American West

By: Norris, Scott

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0963762303
• ISBN13: 9780963762306
• Release Date: January 1
• Publisher: Stone Ladder Press
• Length: 249 Pages
• Weight: 0.94 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.8" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

A fine, fine piece of work...

Little light is shed on many of our great land's smaller towns, such as the ones featured in this book. Who are these people, is one question that pops to mind. Why do they stay in such little towns when you have Vegas and L.A. and Chicago and Miami and NYC? This book helps answer that question. Superb writing, says this observer. Drank a bottle of scotch outside the town limits of Madrid, NM after I read this book. In the company of a Santa Fe woman, of course. "Why do you read that stuff?" she asked. "...because I care," was all I could think to say. You have another one in the works, I hope...