America holds dearly to old ideas of the West as a wild place of majestic space, mountains and deserts, hard-working cowboys and stoic indians. We think of a ranching, mining, and logging economy enlivened here and there with urban centers and outback resorts, but still a bastion of small-town life, individualism, and opportunity. And so it is sometimes--but rarely. The West's most telling reality nowadays is its new social layers: a thriving recreation and tourism industry, a service-based region attracting migrants faster than anywhere else in America, and a postindustrial, high-tech economy creating new jobs in record numbers.

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The West is America's most rapidly growing area, replete with pop-up shopping malls, office parks, and cookie-cutter subdivisions. Rodeos, dude ranches, national parks, and wilderness areas now abide with sprawling cities, ritzy ski resorts, and meccas of world-class climbing, mountain biking, and fly fishing.

The Atlas of the New West is a collaborative venture between Peter Goin and members of the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado at Boulder. This volume was edited by Bill Riebsame and contains maps by the cartographer Jim Robb. Patty Limerick, McArthur Grant recipient and author of the critically acclaimed The Legacy of Conquest, and Charles Wilkinson, famed lawyer supporting American Indian sovereign rights issues, contributed essays for the Atlas. Peter served as the photographer for the project.