A collection of photographs of people and places of the American West, originally published in National Geographic over the course of the last 125 years. The text, what there is of it, often feels like it's trying a little too hard to be meaningful and profound, but the photographs are quite capable of speaking for themselves. Overall, it's a rather a striking and evocative collection of images, although in my case, that might be because there are a lot of memories to evoke. I live in New Mexico, and have been to many of the places depicted here, and it's surprising how effectively this book brought some of those experiences back to me. I'm feeling a remarkable desire now to just hop into my car and head out into the desert. ( )