Lasso the Wind : Away to the New West

by Timothy Egan, Timothy P. Egan

Release Date: 26 October, 1999

Edition: Paperback

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A wide-eyed look at the west w/o rose-colored glasses

After reading 'A Good Rain' a number of years ago, I couldn't wait for Egan's next book. And I was not disappointed. Egan casts aside the romantic visions and fanatasies about the real West, and gives his readers a large dose of reality and fact. As with his previous book, I felt myself both incredibly drawn by his accounts, descriptions and history of his subjects - while at the same time agonizing for the atrocities carried out by my predecessors. Egan's prose perfectly captures the geography of the west in a way few authors have been able to.

'Lasso the Wind' falls under the "must read" category for anyone living, working or studying in the West...regardless of whether they are a 5th generation rancher or a 1st generation Sierra Club volunteer.

A new natural history

I am an Australian who has never been to the United States, so I might be coming at this book from a different perspective to many.

I thought the writing was wonderfully evocative, both in the positive descriptions (eg. the Western landscape) and the negative descriptions (eg. the stupidity of cows). I got a real sense of the beauty of the land.

I thought the social and political aspect of the book was also really interesting because it took a view of American history which doesn't assume that you know who Thomas Jefferson was, but still requires some intelligence from the reader. Rather than just rubbishing traditional Western lifestyles, Egan engages with and explores them. He then offers some possible future solutions which are interesting and seem practical.

I found the way Egan combined natural and political and social and demographic history into one whole comprehensible theory fantastic.