Book Review - Sagebrush Rebel: Reagan's Battle With Environmental Extremists

William Perry Pendley, the author of Sagebrush Rebel:  Reagan's Battle With Environmental Extremists And Why It Matters Today, is the President and CLO of the Mountain States Legal Foundation and served as the Deputy Secretary for Energy & Minerals at the Dept. of Interior during the Reagan Administration.  He is also the author of  War on the West: Government Tyranny on America's Great Frontier,  Warriors for the West: Fighting Bureaucrats, Radical Groups, And Liberal Judges on America's Frontier, and It Takes A Hero: The Grass Roots Battle Against Environmental Oppression.

 Full disclosure:  I served with Pendley during Reagan's first term (as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Land & Water) and have remained a friend and admirer ever since.

Do you remember Jimmy Carter's war on the west?  Do you remember Cecil Andrus and his attack on water rights, property rights, livestock grazing, the timber industry, mineral leasing and irrigation districts?

Do you remember when Ronald Reagan rode into town with his conservative cohorts to right the wrongs and cure the "malaise" manufactured by Carter & Andrus?

If you don't remember either, you need to get this book.  If you remember both, you need to get this book, for it is an insiders' look of what, where, why and how it all unfolded.

Unfortunately, some of the recent books by conservative authors are really just a long essay, do not contain the depth required to thoroughly understand an issue and do not provide sufficient documentation.  That is certainly not the case here, as through the following twelve chapters Pendley provides complete discussions of the issues and each chapter is fully footnoted (there are almost 100 pages of notes):

01.  Federal Land Belongs to Us:  To The People of America
02.  Large Amounts of Oil & Gas --Off Our Shores
03.  From Sagebrush Rebels To Good Neighbors
04.  "We Print What We Know--so We Print Lies"
05.  Modern Day Luddites
06.  The Pit Bull Of Environmental Laws
07.  If It Can't Be Grown, It Has To Be Mined
08.  Government's Insatiable Hunger For Land
09.  Inside The Beltway:  Taming The Bureacracy--Teaming With Congress
10.  America:  The Saudi Arabia of Coal
11.  A Department of Miscellany
12.  That Shining City: America As A Chosen Land

In addition, at the end of each chapter Pendley discusses the current situation and provides thoughts for the future.

I have many fond memories of that era and the battles (both inside and outside Interior) to bring change to America.  This book has brought those memories flooding back, so let's call this review Part 1.  Expect more comments on this interesting book and some of my personal remembrances.

In the meantime, you better get a copy of this book for yourself, your friends and colleagues and anybody else who enjoys a good read.