Mention of the America West brings to mind familiar images: Vast expanses of empty and enormous mountain peaks, cowboys and Indians on horseback shooting at each other, scenic wonders like the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone’s Old Faithful geyser. It’s a land of independent-minded men and tender but tough women, of faithful dogs and bloodthirsty cougars, of blazing heat and bitter cold. It’s a place where, more than anywhere else in the world, a person can make their way upward without forfeiting their integrity.

Yet these images miss much of the reality of today’s West. The land starting with the arid reaches of the Great Plains and running west to the Cascade Mountains and the Sierra Nevada that block off the Pacific Coast is indeed a place of scenic beauty. But it is also, by some measures, one of the most urbanized parts of the United States: Nearly half its people live in a metropolitan area with a population over 1 million. Today’s westerner is far less likely to be a rancher than a suburbanite, and the number of people making a living as cowboys is vanishingly small. The West contains the largest number of people identifying themselves as American Indians, but they have become outnumbered by those calling themselves Hispanics.