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The Dreams and Reality of the American West

Pacific Northwest Bureau Chief for the New York Times Timothy Egan. His two-part series on urban sprawl in the western United States recently appeared in the Times. Egan writes that cities like Las Vegas, Phoenix, Denver, and Salt Lake are growing rapidly, with growth going mostly unchecked. In Phoenix, he writes that land is being consumed at the rate of "an acre an hour." But in Portland, Oregon city officials over 20 years ago set up guidelines to control rampant growth. Because the city has the "strictest laws against urban sprawl in the nation" urban Portland is surrounded by forest, farms and open space.

21:55
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Other segments from the episode on January 8, 1997

Fresh Air with Terry Gross, January 8, 1997: Interview with Timothy Egan; Interview with Jonathan Raban; Review of Ellery Eskelin's album "The Sun Died."
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19:25

Exhuming the Remains of Homestead Life

British writer Jonathan Raban. His new book "Bad Land: An American Romance" is based on memoirs, diaries, photographs and letters of immigrants who in the early 1900s traveled to Montana to homestead. Raban himself is something of an immigrant; he settled in Seattle in 1990.

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Teddy Roosevelt And The Fire That Saved The Forests

Author Timothy Egan argues in The Big Burn that the forest fire of 1910 — the largest in American history — actually saved the forests, even as its flames charred the trees. It helped rally public support, Egan explains, behind Theodore Roosevelt's push to protect national lands.

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Stories from the Great American Dust Bowl

Timothy Egan is the author of the book The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl. Now out in paperback, the book was awarded the National Book Award for nonfiction. Egan is a national enterprise reporter for the New York Times, and was part of the team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2001 for a series on race in America.

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