West United States

Best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Lonesome Dove, McMurtry wrote more than 30 books and screenplays, many set in the West. He died on March 25. Originally broadcast in 1995.

New Yorker staff writer David Owen says that convoluted legal agreements and a patchwork of infrastructure determine how water from the Colorado is allocated. His new book is Where The Water Goes.

Kelly Reichardt presents the interlocking lives of several Montana women in her new film, Certain Women. Critic John Powers calls it a work of "quiet restraint and unhurried rhythm."

On Wednesday, it was announced that the 28-year-old fiction writer had won the Story Prize as well as the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her debut story collection explores the landscape, people and history of the American West.

When the Hoover Dam was finished in 1935, it was three times larger than any other dam on the planet. Journalist Michael Hiltzik examines the humongous engineering achievement — including how the Hoover Dam was conceived, designed and built — in a new book, Colossus.

Writer Wallace Stegner. His novels and essays were often based in the West where he grew up and lived for many years. Stegner started the creative writing program at Stanford University in California, which he ran for 26 years. In 1971 he won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel Angle of Repose. One of his most popular books was 1943’s semi-autobiographical Big Rock Candy Mountain. Terry talked with him at the time of the publication of his book of essays, Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs. He died in 1993. (REBROADCAST from 4/15/92)

Terry Gross talks with writer Allen Barra ("Bear-ah"), the author of "Inventing Wyatt Earp: His Life and Many Legends" (Carroll & Graff Publishers). It tells the story of the famous sometime lawman and the shootout at the O.K. Corral at Tombstone, Arizona where Wyatt Earp was the only man left standing. Barra is a sports columnist for the Wall Street Journal.

Historian Dayton Duncan. He's the author of the book "Lewis and Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery -- an Illustrated History" (Knopf). He also co-produced the PBS series of the same name with documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, and is the author of "Out West" (Penguin), in which he re-travels the Merriweather Lewis and William Clark journey.

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.

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.