As part of The Colorado Sun’s literature section — SunLit — we’re featuring staff picks from book stores across the state. >> Click here for more SunLit
This week’s bookstore: Poor Richard’s Books & Gifts, 320 N. Tejon St., Colorado Springs
From the publisher: Layering climate science, mythologies, nature writing, and personal experiences, this New York Times Notable Book presents a stunning reckoning with our current moment and with the literal and figurative end of time. Desert Notebooks examines how the unprecedented pace of destruction to our environment and an increasingly unstable geopolitical landscape have led us to the brink of a calamity greater than any humankind has confronted before.
From Jeffery Payne, Book Department Coordinator: “Ehrenreich brings his focus, reverence, and reserve, to the growing arid regions of the west. His perspective balances frustration and hope, not an easy task. Mixing history lessons and personal reflection, it’s like peeking into someone’s very private diary – you know you shouldn’t continue on…but you do.”
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The Reign of Wolf 21
By Rich McIntyre
Greystone Books
$16.51
Pre-order ships April 12, 2022
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From the publisher: The Druid Peak Pack was the most famous wolf pack in Yellowstone National Park, and maybe even in the world. This is the dramatic true story of its remarkable leader, Wolf 21–whose compassion and loyalty challenges commonly held beliefs about alpha males. In this compelling follow-up to the national bestseller The Rise of Wolf 8, Rick McIntyre profiles one of Yellowstone’s most revered alpha males, Wolf 21. Leader of the Druid Peak Pack, Wolf 21 was known for his unwavering bravery, his unusual benevolence (unlike other alphas, he never killed defeated rival males), and his fierce commitment to his mate, the formidable Wolf 42.
From Jeffery Payne, Book Department Coordinator: “With keen awareness and devotion the author guides us through the incredibly complex lives and personalities of one of Yellowstone’s most storied creatures. In remarkable detail you are taken into the entangled and complicated relationships that extend from Wolf 21. Pure and simple, an epic western love story.”
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From the publisher: Billionaire Wilderness takes you inside the exclusive world of the ultra-wealthy, showing how today’s richest people are using the natural environment to solve the existential dilemmas they face. Justin Farrell spent five years in Teton County, Wyoming, the richest county in the United States, and a community where income inequality is the worst in the nation. He conducted hundreds of in-depth interviews, gaining unprecedented access to tech CEOs, Wall Street financiers, oil magnates, and other prominent figures in business and politics. He also talked with the rural poor who live among the ultra-wealthy and often work for them. The result is a penetrating account of the far-reaching consequences of the massive accrual of wealth, and an eye-opening and sometimes troubling portrait of a changing American West where romanticizing rural poverty and conserving nature can be lucrative–socially as well as financially.
From Jeffery Payne, Book Department Coordinator: “A fascinating glimpse into the challenges of the elite of the Mountain West, their desire for empathy (and exclusion), in one of the country’s most desirable neighborhoods – but this time the neighborhood is a whole county in Wyoming. Billionaire Wilderness reveals the complicated and tenuous balance between the ultra-wealthy and the working class of Teton County.”
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From the Publisher: When the state of Colorado ordered its residents to shelter in place in response to the spread of coronavirus, writers Pam Houston and Amy Irvine–who had never met–began a correspondence based on their shared devotion to the rugged, windswept mountains that surround their homes, one on either side of the Continental Divide. As the numbers of infected and dead rose and the nation split dangerously over the crisis, Houston and Irvine found their letters to one another nearly as necessary as breath. Part tribute to wilderness, part indictment against tyranny and greed, Air Mail: Letters of Politics, Pandemics, and Place reveals the evolution of a friendship that galvanizes as it chronicles a strange new world.
From Jeffery Payne, Book Department Coordinator: “A surprisingly delightful book that shows the power of words in building a friendship between two strangers, two very accomplished authors. Each has a distinctive voice as they share their thoughts and challenges at the very beginning of the pandemic in 2020. Grab a glass of wine (or hot herbal tea) and soak up the kinship that grows between them.”
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