By Samuel Western
ISBN: 0943972736
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Homestead Publishing
Your price: $14.95
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Wyoming, settled by an opportunistic railroad and cattlemen, stands where Ireland remained for centuries: a poor, friendly, hard-working state that exports everything, especially its young. From 1990 to 2000, Wyoming aged faster than any other state in the union.
Wyoming's "way-of-life" mythology portrays the image of a wild, free land where everyone's a trapper, homesteader, bronco rider, wildcatter, do-or-die prospector, or, the most persistent image: cattle baron.
This mythology has ironically stripped Wyoming of life-giving vigor. When commodity prices are good, it lets Wyoming see the world from a mountaintop. Then prices drop and Wyoming gets pushed off the mountain. Its dreams get sold down the river. This mythology has left Wyoming dependent on federal largess, and bankrupt but for a veneer of oil and gas money.
Pushed Off the Mountain asks the question few want to discuss: How long will Wyoming champion a mythology that leads to chronic rootlessness and an inability to influence its future? Samuel Western, a longtime correspondent for The Economist of London, feels that a solution to Wyoming's economic woes has little to do with money but instead rethinking the rendition of its "way-of-life" myths.