Two book recommendations have come in:
SAGEBRUSH EMPIRE:
How a Remote Utah County Became the Battlefront of American Public Lands
by Jonathan P. Thompson
San Juan County, Utah, contains some of the most spectacular landscapes in the world, rich in culture and history. But it’s also long been plagued with racism, bitterness, and politics as twisted as the canyons. Award-winning journalist Jonathan P. Thompson explores the redrock canyons and this corner of the western United States, which for five decades has been at the center of the American public lands wars.
https://www.torreyhouse.org/sagebrush-empire
AMERICAN ZION
What happens when members of an American religion—one built in the nineteenth century on personal prophecy and land proprietorship—assert possession over western federal lands, armed with guns and a certainty that God wants them to go to war? American Zion is the story of the ongoing feud between Mormon ranching family the Bundys, the federal government, and the American public. Historian Betsy Gaines Quammen examines the roots of the Bundys’ cowboy confrontations, and how history has shaped an often-dangerous mindset which today feeds the militia movement and threatens public lands, wild species, and American heritage.
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