THE GEOGRAPHY OF HOPE: A Tribute to...

THE GEOGRAPHY OF HOPE: A Tribute to Wallace Stegner edited by Page Stegner & Mary Stegner (Sierra Club Books: $15, 140 pp., illustrated, paperback original). Wallace Stegner, who died in 1993 at age 84, strove to reshape the image of the American West through his writing, teaching and environmental activism. Twenty-two students, friends and colleagues, including Bruce Babbitt, Barry Lopez, William Kittredge and Gretel Ehrlich, pay tribute to an extraordinary man and his achievements in these memorial essays. They recount loving and comic anecdotes and praise Stegner’s integrity, dedication and humanity with superlatives that would have embarrassed the modest recipient of both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. Readers familiar with Stegner’s books will enjoy these glimpses of the author at work and leisure; others will find a warm introduction to them.