Two new books about America’s wild horse herds arrived at the UW Libraries this week.

Large animal veterinarian Don Hoglund wrote Nobody’s Horses about the rescue of almost 2,000 wild horses from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. He offers background on the herd’s history, but the real story is the tricky political and practical matter of relocating that many horses. Cowboys, ranchers, Native Americans and the U.S. government voiced their opinions, and the free-spirited horses did not all go willingly.

Among Wild Horses features Lynne Pomeranz’s beautiful full-color photography of the mustangs of Pryor Mountain. Any horse lover will enjoy her pictures of horses roaming freely in the high desert of Wyoming and Montana.

Congratulations to professor H. L. Hix whose collection of poems, Chromatic, was recently named a finalist for the National Book Award in poetry. The poems in Chromatic have been described as an exploration of “the full range of effects caused by human desire, from ecstasy to suffering.” Winners of the National Book Award will be announced November 15.

The dapper Hix teaches at the University of Wyoming where he is the director of the MFA program in Creative Writing.

To read more of his work, visit Ploughshares or the UW Libraries.

Please Join the Albany County Historical Society for a presentation by Wyoming Author Lori Van Pelt as she discusses her new book Capital Characters of Old Cheyenne on October 17, 2006 at the Alice Hardie Stevens Center.

Refreshments served at 7:00 p.m., meeting begins at 7:30 p.m.

Ms. Van Pelt will have books to autograph following her presentation. This event is sponsored by a Grant from the Wyoming Humanities Council, a state-based program of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

“The Secret Scrapbook of a Soiled Dove” will be the presentation by AHC Reference Supervisor Carol Bowers at the AHC Stock Growers’ Room on Friday, October 20th, at 3 PM with a free reception to follow.

Bowers contributed a chapter about a scrapbook created by Monte Arlington Grover, a Laramie prostitute, to The Scrapbook in American Life, a collection of essays that was recently honored with the Pioneer America Society’s 2006 Alan B. Noble Award for excellence as the best-edited book on North American material culture.

Check out these biographies recommended by the staff and faculty of the Literary Interest Committee (LIC).

Shadow Mountain is a personal memoir by activist and scientist Renee Askins who was involved with wolves and the Yellowstone reintroduction. [Recommended by Reference Librarian Diana Shelton]

The Lives of Beryl Markham, by Errol Trzebinski, is the story of the real-life “other woman” of Denys Finch-Hatton (of Out of Africa), and of several other men, for that matter. Raised in Africa, she became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic east to west, which was just one of her many adventures. [Recommended by Carol Smith, Library Technical Services]

Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking is an unsentimental memoir of the year following her husband’s sudden death. Her daughter is facing a life threatening illness at the same time. [Recommended by Reference Librarian Diana Shelton]

Already being hailed as one of the best books of 2006, Arthur & George offers an imaginative version of a true story: the complicated friendship of Victorian figures Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and George Edalji. Michael Dirda, reviewing the book for The Washington Post, wrote:

“Barnes’s writing is, as usual, masterly throughout Arthur & George, not only as the pages shift from one man’s consciousness to the other’s but also in the way their author keeps the reader on edge. Facts are interpreted, then reinterpreted; the bigoted speak convincingly; nothing turns out quite as expected; and even the book’s coda delivers a final shock.”

If you are looking for a new book that evokes the richness of the Wyoming landscape, try Augusta Locke by William Haywood Henderson. Heroine Gussie Locke begins the story in 1903 rural Minnesota, and her wanderlust takes her to Greeley, CO and the mountains of Wyoming. Booklist gave it a starred review, noting that

“Henderson’s novel is an extraordinarily beautiful creation, brought to the reader on the wings of the ravens that serve as its protagonist’s familiars. Told in languorous prose virtually encrusted with the details of nature–very reminiscent of Annie Dillard–this story follows Gussie Locke through a lifetime of wandering.”

Already being hailed as one of the best books of 2006, Arthur & George offers an imaginative version of a true story: the complicated friendship of Victorian figures Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and George Edalji. Michael Dirda, reviewing the book for The Washington Post, wrote:

“Barnes’s writing is, as usual, masterly throughout Arthur & George, not only as the pages shift from one man’s consciousness to the other’s but also in the way their author keeps the reader on edge. Facts are interpreted, then reinterpreted; the bigoted speak convincingly; nothing turns out quite as expected; and even the book’s coda delivers a final shock.”

If you are looking for a new book that evokes the richness of the Wyoming landscape, try Augusta Locke by William Haywood Henderson. Heroine Gussie Locke begins the story in 1903 rural Minnesota, and her wanderlust takes her to Greeley, CO and the mountains of Wyoming. Booklist gave it a starred review, noting that

“Henderson’s novel is an extraordinarily beautiful creation, brought to the reader on the wings of the ravens that serve as its protagonist’s familiars. Told in languorous prose virtually encrusted with the details of nature–very reminiscent of Annie Dillard–this story follows Gussie Locke through a lifetime of wandering.”

This is a movie you’ll be telling your friends about the next day. Grizzly Man is Werner Herzog’s look at the life of Timothy Treadwell, a man so passionate about Alaska’s bears that he lived with them every summer until his death.

Speaking of movies that get people talking, if you haven’t yet seen the most talked about movie of 2005, now is the time. Brokeback Mountain is based on an Annie Proulx short story from her collection Close Range: Wyoming Stories. All of the stories in the collection have the same lyrical spareness and spot-on dialogue of Brokeback Mountain and make excellent summer reading.