Literary scholar Ann Ronald found a career and a home when she moved to Reno to teach at the University of Nevada. There, she undertook the study of the literature of the West and discovered that the region"s vast open spaces satisfied her zest for the outdoors. The essays collected in Reader of the Purple Sage reflect Ronald"s wide-ranging interests. Here are highly informative-and deeply informed-critical essays on writers as diverse as Zane Gray, Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner, and Terry Tempest Williams, and on such varied topics as the image of Reno in nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction. Included are several recent essays in which Ronald thoughtfully discusses the burgeoning field of environmental writing, some of its principal themes and concerns, and its best-known practitioners.