Quammen tells the story of Cliven Bundy and the conflict between ranchers and conservationists mostly around St George, Utah. She focuses on the two big showdowns, the 2014 Bunkerville event and the 2016 Malheur Wildlife Refuge event. She retells the history of the Mormon Church to help us understand the distrust of the federal government and the feeling of ownership of the land. She sketches portraits of many other characters involved: Edward Abbey, May Bulloch, Cleon Skousen, etc. She widens the range of positions - Abbey sees the landscape as properly empty of humans, the Paiute tribes have made that land their home for thousands of years.

The conflicts sketched in this book are some of the most important... really it's hard to put them in any perspective. These conflicts are what make us unable to manage resources effectively, to live on the planet in any sustainable way. This book sketches our doom.

The topic is just too vast and too deep. Quammen kind of darts around and touches bits and pieces. It's a good preliminary sketch. To really grapple with the issues... truly daunting. Now we have the boogaloo boys using Black Lives Matter protests as cover for assassinations. It could be a thousand years before we get a Gibbon to survey the wreckage and provide the more thorough analysis that's called for. Until then, Quammen's sketch is a good start. ( )