This collection shows that Wallace Stegner’s work, however flawed, remains a useful tool for assessing the past, present, and future of the American West.

List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Prologue: Wallace Stegner in His Time and in Ours Mark Fiege, Michael J. Lansing, and Leisl Carr Childers Openings 1. Wallace Stegner’s Unsettled Country: Ruin, Realism, and Possibility in the American West Mark Fiege Ruin 2. The American West as Exploited Space: From One Nation to Poston Alexandra Hernandez 3. Creation as Erasure: Wallace Stegner and the Making and Unmaking of Regions Michael J. Lansing 4. Exploits against the Effete: Wallace Stegner and Bernard DeVoto, Men of Western Letters Flannery Burke 5. Returning to the Best Idea We Ever Had Michael Childers Realism 6. The Legacies of Wallace Stegner and the Stegner Fellowships in a Changing American West Nancy S. Cook 7. Sludge in the Cup: Wallace Stegner’s Philosophical Legacy and the Hard Job Ahead Michael A. Brown 8. Hope in Public Lands: A Conversation Leisl Carr Childers and Adam M. Sowards Possibility 9. The Education of Wallace Stegner Melody Graulich 10. Revisiting “The Marks of Human Passage”: Lessons from the Dinosaur and Bears Ears National Monument Controversies Robert B. Keiter 11. The Geography of Hope in an Age of Uncertainty Paul Formisano 12. The American West as Unlivable Space: Hope, Despair, and Adaptation in an Era of Climate Chaos Robert M. Wilson Epilogue: Richer for This Sorrow Mark Fiege, Michael J. Lansing, and Leisl Carr Childers Contributors Index