How can we face the road ahead politically, economically, environmentally, technologically and culturally if we aren’t talking?
—BGQ
This Haunted Land
Coming September 2026
In This Haunted Land, Betsy Gaines Quammen investigates some of America's most enduring ghost stories and uncovers how they can help us come to terms with our unsettled past. With curiosity and an open-hearted willingness to learn from the living and the dead, Gaines Quammen takes readers on a riveting, sometimes spooky journey into the haunted towns, lands, waters, and parts of history that we too often ignore. From a once-booming uranium mine community now entombed in Colorado’s Mesa County, to America’s oldest fort on the east coast of Florida, to the forests of Arkansas where the ivory-billed woodpecker once took flight, This Haunted Land interweaves memory, mourning, folklore, and social anxiety—and shows that politicized efforts to rewrite history can be defeated by listening to the spectres of the past
True West: Myth and Mending on the Far Side of America
Released October 2023
“People think they ‘know’ the West but they’re usually wrong, that’s because there’s no region of our country more steeped in fallacy, fake news, and fable. Betsy Gaines Quammen, a wry and wise observer, takes us on a ride across the modern West—and along the way, disentangles reality from centuries of myth and mystique.”
—HAMPTON SIDES, New York Times bestselling author of Blood and Thunder
"In telling the stories that comprise True West, Betsy Gaines Quammen reminds us that in order to keep this fractured country together we must meet our fellow Americans where they are, on their own terms."
—BETO O’ROURKE, author of We’ve Got to Try
American Zion: Cliven Bundy, God and Public Lands in the West
Released March 2020
"A deep, fascinating dive into a uniquely American brand of religious zealotry that poses a grave threat to our national parks, wilderness areas, wildlife sanctuaries, and other public lands. It also happens to be a delight to read."
—JON KRAKAUER
"A magnificent portrait of complexity, interrogating the collision between frontier thinking and the rising consciousness toward the climate crisis on public lands. Brilliant and electrifying…Gaines Quammen's voice is bright, engaging, and smart. She listens. She is fair. But she is not seduced by cowboy mythology. Her vision calls for an ecological wisdom that can govern our communities, both human and wild, with reverence and respect."
—TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS, author of Erosion
A Watershed Moment: The American West in the Age of Limits
Released in 2024
Contributing writer:
“The Myth of Homeland: Bunkerville Nevada”
The Earth Will Appear as the Garden of Eden: Essays on Mormon Environmental History
Released in 2019
Contributing writer:
“American Zion, the Building of Zion National Park”
Biodiversity of the World, Conservation from Genes to Landscapes: Snow Leopards
Released in 2016
Contributing writer:
“Introduction to Religious and Cultural Impacts on Snow Leopard Conservation”
Encyclopedia of Nature and Religion
Released in 2005
Contributing writer:
“Mongolian Buddhism and Taimen Conservation”