Pushed Off the Mountain Sold Down the River: Wyoming's Search for Its Soul [Paperback]

Samuel Western (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Homestead Pub; Revised edition (June 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0943972736
• ISBN-13: 978-0943972732
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #117,561 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Flawed, but still useful, May 31, 2006

By 

Paul J. Bonneau - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pushed Off the Mountain Sold Down the River: Wyoming's Search for Its Soul (Paperback)

This book gives a lot of useful background and information about Wyoming; however it is presented from the point of view of a leftist academic.

If you are a leftist, or a mainstream Keynsian, or of a similar ilk, then you will find nothing to argue with in this book. If you are more conservative or libertarian, or follow the Austrian or Chicago schools of economics, you will be grateful for the background information while irritated at the sometimes absurd interpretation Western puts on things. For example, he constantly snipes at the ideal of independence that he says Wyomingites generally have. Only a collectivist would look at independence as a vice.

Also, there are some errors here and there, such as the comparison of states using a measure that is not a per-capita one, or a really strange idea of what the U.S. Constitution's Commerce Clause is about.

One gets the overall impression that Western secretly thinks, "If only Wyoming were more like California," that deep down he doesn't really like Wyoming very much (exemplified by his absurd irritation about the Wyoming Stub-on-Steamboat license plates). Well, Wyoming is not California, and never could be, because it does not have the productive soil or great seaports or huge population or substantial wartime-built economy and technology or the great Congressional clout. The Wyoming economy is the way it is because of the physical situation of the state, not because of character "defects" in the people such as too much independence (in fact the citizenry, not the scenery, is the best thing about this state, if you ask this newcomer). Wyoming has its own set of vices and virtues, lucky breaks and unfortunate realities, just like any other state does. People should live in the states that suit them, not try to make them into something they are not and can never be (and shouldn't be).

Read it for the backgrounder aspect, and even for some of the critiques of the good-old-boy network; but if you are like me you will be scribbling irritated notes in the margins through the book.

12 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A phony past makes for a lousy future, August 23, 2002

By 

Scott Clark Farris (Sacramento, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pushed Off the Mountain Sold Down the River: Wyoming's Search for Its Soul (Paperback)

While this popular economic history will most appeal to readers with an interest in Wyoming, it raises the broader question of how our interpretation of the past influences current policy decisions.
Sam Western, a regular contributor to The Economist and other publications, seeks answers to the question of why Wyoming remains our least populous state -- with a populations that is rapidly aging as young adults leave the state to look for work elsewhere.
One of the chief culprits, he concludes, is Wyoming's manufacture of a false history around cowboy mythology. While the bucking horse is one of Wyoming's most identifiable symbols (it's on every Wyoming license plate), Western notes that Wyoming's key early settlers were, in fact, wealthy merchants who, from the beginning, had an uphill battle attracting immigrants to the state's high plains and mountains. (Western relates that President Grant for a time considered divying up the Wyoming Territory among other neighboring states.)

The famed Wyoming "cattle barons" tended to be seasonal residents and otherwise sbsentee landlords from New York or Europe. Far from being a wild western town along the lines of Dodge City, Cheyenne was a genteel community with an opera house that featured Sarah Bernhardt and America's first electric street lights.
When the cattle boom burst in 1888, Wyoming was left destitute, without the sizable population of yeoman farmers and small businessmen that broadened the economic base of other states.
Wyoming, Western writes, was left to the mercy of out-of-state corporations drawn to exploit the state's natural resources with minimal interest in developing the state in any other meaningful way.
Anxious to take advantage of the growing business of tourism at the turn of the last century, Wyoming's leaders decided to give visitors what they wanted -- rodeos and wild west shows. The locals were urged to wear cowboy attire to add to the atmosphere.
The problem with this otherwise innocent fun, Western argues, is that the state began to believe the myth that the state was built by ranching (an actual small player in the state's economy throughout the majority of its history) and that Wyoming and its people embodied the mythic traits of the cowboy, most especially self-reliance. (One is reminded of John Ford's maxim in "The Man Who Shot Libery Valance" -- "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.")
This has led to the bizarre duality in Wyoming where the ranching industry is so venerated that it is a massively over-subsidized industry, while the state rejects assistance to other more promising business interests on the grounds that it is counter to Wyoming's value of rugged independence.
This is a slim volume (about 100 pages) and a brisk read, but it is very strong on substance. It is very accessible with the right mix of facts and revealing personal stories and anecdotes. It asks insightful questions that, hopefully, Wyoming citizens will want to have addressed by their leaders.
Disclaimer: I was interviewed by the author in his preparations for the book. Even with some advance notice of his intentions, I still found many surprises that challenged my conception of Wyoming history.

9 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent diagnosis of Wyoming's underdevelopment, August 27, 2002

By 

H. Feeney "etherhwf" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pushed Off the Mountain Sold Down the River: Wyoming's Search for Its Soul (Paperback)

This little book deserves a much wider readership than it will probably receive. The author, a former correspondent for The Economist magazine, gives an incisive thumbnail of why the American state of Wyoming remains backward, economically, socially and culturally.
People who only know Wyoming through visits to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks may not realize what a struggle it is for most people who live here - and more importantly, why so many people who try to live here eventually give up. If you have spent even a few hours in Wyoming and been captivated by it, I beg you to read this book!
Somewhat ironically, the present culture in Wyoming resembles life in Stalinist Russia more than a little sometimes, so, mixing historical-era images a bit, perhaps we might consider this book the first "samizdat" salvo from Equality State dissidents.
If this book goes to a second printing, there are a number of typos that will need fixing, but isn't a rough quality part of the samizdat mystique?