There is something in Utah, its culture and land, that pushes humans to extremes. In the Mormon Zion, you find the Greekest Greek-Americans, the darkest Goths, edgiest skiiers and the most committed drinkers.

So it should come as no surprise that among liberal thinkers, Utah would produce, Wallace Stegner, a member of the "all-star team of 20th-century American writers." John Wilson, culture editor of the International Herald Tribune, writes:

If you were choosing an all-star team of 20th-century American writers to represent the liberal mind - construed expansively, not in narrowly political terms - you might have Lionel Trilling batting cleanup, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. hitting eighth and so on. But you'd have to reserve a spot in the lineup for a non-Mormon graduate of the University of Utah (class of 1930)...

Wilson reviews a new biography of the novelist, conservationist and chronicler of Utah and the West, Wallace Stegner and the American West by Philip L. Fradkin. Stegner's centennial comes in 2009.

Stegner fought to block the Glen Canyon Dam, and:

By the end of his life, he had come to feel that much of the West was changed beyond recognition and maybe beyond repair.