A guided tour of Montana's literature, including Native American stories, autobiographies, journals, fiction, and poetry.

Southwest Montana is beautiful country, evoking mythologies of freedom and escape long associated with the West. Partly because of its burgeoning presence in popular culture, film, and literature, including William Kittredge's anthology The Last Best Place, the scarcely populated region has witnessed an influx of wealthy, white migrants over the last few decades. But another, largely invisible and unstudied type of migration is also present. Though Mexican migrants have worked on Montana's ranches and farms since the 1920s, increasing numbers of migrant families—both documented and undocumented—are moving to the area to support its growing construction and service sectors. The Last Best Place? asks us to consider the multiple racial and class-related barriers that Mexican migrants must negotiate in the unique context of Montana's rural gentrification. These daily life struggles and inter-group power dynamics are deftly examined through extensive interviews and ethnography, as are the ways gender structures inequalities within migrant families and communities. But Leah Schmalzbauer's research extends even farther to highlight the power of place and demonstrate how Montana's geography and rurality intersect with race, class, gender, family, illegality, and transnationalism to affect migrants' well-being and aspirations. Though the New West is just one among many new destinations, it forces us to recognize that the geographic subjectivities and intricacies of these destinations must be taken into account to understand the full complexity of migrant life.

MONTANA: SKIING THE LAST BEST PLACEPhotographs by Craig W. HergertStories by Brian HurlbutForeword by Warren MillerFrom big-mountain resorts to small town ski hills only open a few days a week, Montana is the last frontier for skiing in the West. It's a place where farmers and ranchers share the slopes with snowboarders and twin-tip skiers, a place where snow lovers can still experience skiing at a mountain not yet contaminated by the sport's increasingly commercial atmosphere. Vintage chairlifts and A-frame lodges are as much a part of Montana's skiing landscape as high-speed quads and glitzy resorts, yet they seamlessly blend together and coexist to create a winter experience like no other: Wide-open spaces, expansive mountain vistas, dry, light powder, friendly locals and a laid-back feel.This is what skiing in Montana is like, as seen through the camera lens of award-winning photographer Craig W. Hergert in this breathtaking new volume. Compiled over many years and thousands of miles, "Montana: Skiing the Last Best Place" highlights all of the state's seventeen ski areas in stunning photographs that brilliantly depict the lifestyle, atmosphere and charm of winter in the Treasure State. Combined with stories about each mountain, these timeless photos capture the people and places that make Montana a special place to ski, creating a one-of-a-kind book that uniquely and beautifully chronicles Montana's skiing culture. For skiing, Montana truly is the Last Best Place, recorded here in photographs, no doubt to be treasured for years to come.

Lily Odilon—local wild child from a small Idaho town—has vanished after spending the night with her boyfriend, new kid Albert Morales. Now he is suspected in her disappearance. Albert, along with Lily’s prickly younger sister Olivia, set out to discover what happened to her.

Last Best Hiding Place is a Montanan expression for living under the radar.' This edition documents places that adhere to that adage. Images include deserted streets with beer cans blowing down the road, meth warning billboards, a train on its way into a million acres of emptiness, a cowboy washing his shirts and a whole town for sale.'

A writer returns to Nova Scotia, and finding it almost unrecognizable, sets out to capture the essence of his ancestral province--a place as strange and wild as anywhere on the continent. John DeMont visits places as diverse as a Buddhist abbey; the first free black settlement outside Africa; an island that harbours pirate treasure; and a backwoods barndance where the music of 18th-century Scotland lives on. He visits tuna smugglers and moonshiners; the brooding painter Alex Colville; spiritual seekers from Japan, the US and Europe; and Anne Murray's greatest Austrian fans. He also races yachts with summer residents; patrols the coast for drug smugglers with the Mounties; and casts for salmon with the wisest fishing guides. A road book with a difference, and an endearing search for home, The Last Best Place is wry and wise, as quirky and lively as Nova Scotia itself.

What will the world look like in fifty years? In one hundred years? Four hundred years? Will we still pollute our skies with carbon? Will we still build monuments by the curb to nameless waste gods only to have our diapers, wrappers, cartons, and packaging squished into a foul-smelling hell-on-wheels to be hauled to the methane-emitting monument of NIMBY our global civilization is creating? No! Lets drive cars, build gardens, and live in buildings that leave the earth cleaner than we found it! In this little book Professor Bradley Layton takes us on a journey through the bowels of MIT, the dumpsters of our cities, and shares his own personal account of moving away from the landfill in Missoula, Montana, home of A River Runs Through It, downtown river surfing, and epic fly fishing. Once youve made your way through this book, youll never look at garbage or trash the same way again. You will see and help create a future where nothing goes to waste. You will help restore the earth to The Garden that we were entrusted with in The Beginning.