Range wrangle. (Tools for green living: resources for eco-awareness and action).

In much of the Western United States, cows have more impact on the environment than humans do. Waste of the West (Arizona Lithographers, $28), author Lynn Jacobs' encyclopedic criticism of public land ranching, describes how livestock have stripped the range of its natural flora and displaced indigenous animals. Some of the effects of overgrazing investigated by Jacobs include water contamination, the stunting of natural grass populations and the homogenizing and desiccation of landscapes. According to Waste of the West, food competitors and predators such as buffalo and large cat species, which threaten mass cattle production, continue to be killed outright by the hundreds. This exhaustive treatise shatters the myths of benign cowboy culture, arguing for widespread reform that could help restore a truly wild west.