A book of timeless importance about the American West by a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning author. Wallace Stegner's essays collected in this volume encompass memoir, nature conservation, history, geography, and literature. Stegner's writing about the West, especially in the wake of the post-World War II boom when much of the Rocky Mountan West--Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, and Nevada--was thrust into the modern age retain their sense of immediacy.Writtten over a period of thirty-five years by a writer and thinker who will always hold a unique position in modern American letters, The Sound of Mountain Water is a modern American classic.