Best Books of Wyoming 2021
Thousands of books cross my desk every year as I build home libraries for my clients--and so many of those projects are here in Jackson Hole, naturally many of those books are about Wyoming.
I know a quality book about this state when I see one. They only come along so often, the good ones. Wyoming’s publishing history and current publishing reality are both simply a bit rough around the edges, compared to Colorado or Montana. The state is relatively young. We had no gold rush (and population growth to match it). And much of the human activity in the state has been in the wilderness, far from population centers (and far from academic institutions). The growing tourism industry in the late 20th century created a market for certain books, but as with anything made for tourists, many are cookie cutter, and not all have been high quality. That trend continues today.
When I talk about quality as a librarian, as a bookseller, and as a book lover, I’m referring to these variables: Good writing, a unique or not-yet-told perspective, good book design inside and out, trustworthy information, important scholarship, and beautiful content (in words or images) that doesn’t match every book beside it. Many of these variables stand on their own (good writing alone will get you far). Others do best in an equation: book design, for example, doesn’t make up for other weaknesses, but it does improve access to and enjoyment of almost any content.
Certainly enjoyable and interesting books about Wyoming come out all the time, but it’s not all that often I find myself truly delighted or impressed by the books written in or about my home. This year, though, I encountered surprise and delight not once, but three times! I’ve been enjoying these 3 books in my own home library, and I’m enthusiastic about placing them in many Foxtail Books projects down the road. From cover design to content, they are the sorts of books Wyoming deserves.
The Grand Teton Reader, edited by Robert W. Righter. The University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, Utah, 2021.
An anthology is, at its best, an entire library you can peruse in one volume. It can be a place to start immersing yourself in a subject, a way to explore a variety of writers and angles on a topic. A pathway to more books. To pick up The Grand Teton Reader is to poke through the shelves in a historian’s office (with the historian recommending things over your shoulder). What better way to learn about the Tetons and their surrounds than to learn from a well-read expert. This Reader allows you to have the best of the best on Grand Teton National Park, all in one volume, chosen by someone who knows and presented in context.
Righter’s earlier Teton Country Anthology, published in 1990, was the only historical anthology of the region known to this librarian -- the only place one could read a collection of early writing about the range, many from books that were out-of-print and hard to find. In The Grand Teton Reader, Righter expands his exploration of the topic further afield, adding a number of entries, unique perspectives, and leading up to the modern era. The 35 pieces included are a mix of explorers, residents, visitors, mountaineers, and more, providing a rich narrative about the human experience in these mountains, and a particular love of place. It’s a book anyone who loves the Tetons should read. All the more for history buffs, Wyoming bibliophiles, and rare books collectors: I find Righter’s short contextual entries, timeline, and bibliography (which I find missing from a shocking amount of books professing “history” these days) to be useful and trustworthy tools. This book spans so many perspectives on the Tetons, Wyoming, and countless intersecting themes in the history of the American West. It’s one I’ll return to for years (and learn something new every time). The Grand Teton Reader, The University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, Utah, 2021.
The Artist’s Field Guide to Yellowstone, Trinity University Press, San Antonio, 2021.
What books Wyoming does have a lot of is natural history: the region is biodiverse and wild. Naturally, people want to write about it, study it, capture it. That said, I find it’s rare to find books about nature that either offer something new, or that offer the sweet spot between aesthetic beauty, good science, and good writing. In fact, it’s a rare book on any topic that manages that balance. The Artist’s Field Guide to Yellowstone somehow pulled it off. Yes, Wyoming only gets one share of this book, it is about the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, extending into southern Montana and eastern Idaho. I say it still belongs in every home library in Jackson Hole: Editor Katie Shepherd Christiansen has pulled off something lovely with this monograph.
When something is called a “field guide,” one pictures maps, photography, science, a resource. This small, attractive book feels good in the hand and is undeniably pretty. There is science throughout, but this is a guide to inspiration more than it is to information. It’s partly a who’s who of our most beloved regional writers (Terry Tempest-Williams, Doug Peacock, Susan Marsh, Jack Turner, to name a few) and artists I know and love (Kathryn Turner, Katy Ann Fox, Jocelyn Slack). It also introduced me to creatives I wasn’t aware of, but that I’d like to see more of. The design works with the format (a different artist and writer for each species), drawing one’s eye from illustration, to essay or poem, to small scientific blurb (an on to the next one). The book feels natural; Footprints cross several pages, and I never realized paint is a much better way of capturing a wildflower than a camera can ever be. It also connects the human experience with nature to our written history (you’ll find quotes here and there from historical writing on the ecosystem). This book belongs on bedside tables in guest rooms, under the Christmas tree this year, in the hands of anyone in the Greater Yellowstone region who enjoys nature and art. The Artist’s Field Guide to Yellowstone, Trinity University Press, San Antonio, 2021.
Encampment, Wyoming: Selections from the Lora Webb Nichols Archive, 1899-1948. Edited by Nicole Jean Hill. Fw:Books, Amsterdam, 2021.
Encampment, Wyoming: Selections from the Lora Webb Nichols Archive, 1899-1948 is a photography book that immediately strikes the reader as special, no matter your relationship with the subject matter, no matter which page you open to first. It doesn’t take a photography historian to notice that something interesting is going on: while every shot is set in a generic, rural, western landscape, collectively, they are a whirlwind of clever perspective, visual intimacy, and a scarcely-captured history of everyday life at the time. Too often I lament the documented history Wyoming doesn’t have, what is missing from the story. Here is a book that in one fell swoop contributes an immense wealth to the story of ordinary people, of women’s lives, and of the history of photography in America. It also depicts an individual’s pursuit of her own talent. All the better that we don’t have to travel to Encampment and access an archive: Editor Nicole Jean Hill and Dutch independent publisher Fw:Books have made this amazing photography archive accessible anywhere in the world in these 115 images.
Even an amateur photographer, today, has the benefit of having seen thousands of photos in a lifetime: few of us can claim a virgin eye. Your vacation snapshots, the way we take pictures of friends and family, and all of our clicks behind our cameras or phones are influenced by modern life in a highly visual, digital world, one where every child has experienced millions of photos. Not so for this photographer, who began her work in 1899. The first time I flipped through Webb Nichols’s photos I thought “Where did did this woman develop the eye to create images like this? How many photographs could she possibly have had access to, in such a small, remote place?”
Describing the contents of the photos wouldn’t do them justice. I can only describe my reaction to them. That many of the subjects strike me as strangely modern is a credit to the photographer, not the person having their photo taken. From page to page I laughed, blushed, wondered, smiled. I found eccentricity, romance, history, and Americana. I felt like I was observing some strange mix of scenes: many strangely familiar, others from a foreign landscape, not the Wyoming I thought I knew. The images, taken between 1899 and 1948, are “intentionally not presented chronologically so as to portray the fluidity of time that Lora captured in her lifetime of work” (per the editor). The design of the book is perfectly understated: a charcoal gray cloth binding, black endpapers. All of the focus is on the photographs. The work is allowed to speak for itself: captions and an essay about Web Nichols are left to the back of the book. The best news, just when you think you’re finished, comes at the end: it seems this is only 1% of the archive, and the larger collection is viewable online through the American Heritage Center. Encampment, Wyoming: Selections from the Lora Webb Nichols Archive, 1899-1948, is a treasure. One of those rare visual experiences that feels like an encounter with genius. Fw:Books, Amsterdam, 2021.
Christy Shannon Smirl, MLIS, is a private librarian and the owner of Foxtail Books, a library curating service for homes.
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