One would think that a state so hung up on its supposed independent, agricultural past would know a thing or two about the dangers of monoculture, wouldn't one? But no. Wyoming history classes in the schools learn about the Johnson County range wars and about the ride of "Portuguee" Phillips and about John Colter and Jim Bridger, but never a word is breathed about James Cash Penney,who founded JC Penney as a dry goods store in Kemmerer, a town of maybe 3000 souls, or W. Edwards Denning, a Powell area native who was one of the architects of Japan's economic recovery after World War II.

And, as Western demonstrates with some compelling-looking evidence, anecdotes and interviews with historians, former governors, and fellow members of the Wyoming Future's Project on which Western once served, that version of history is somewhat bunk.

Take the oft-quoted observation, pounded into the minds of voters and visitors alike, propagated by the state Department of Agriculture, by the University of Wyoming's College of Agriculture, by every office seeker in the land except for your humble blogger (who, let's be honest, was never an office seeker anyway), namely that "Agriculture has always been a major industry in Wyoming and its importance to the state's economic stability will continue."

As Vladmir Ilych Lenin once observed, "A lie told often enough becomes the truth." We in Wyoming have heard this pronouncement on high about the importance of agriculture to our state's economy and "way of life" so often that most of us have never thought to question it.

But along came Western, who put his years of coaxing stories and surprises out of raw numbers to good use in showing that Wyoming has never been a great agricultural producer in the grand scheme of things, producing, for example, just two percent of the total value of America's cattle and calves. And while Wyoming schoolchildren like I once was grow up learning all about romantic, free and independent figures like trappers, homesteaders, bronco riders, wildcatters, prospectors and cattle barons, Wyoming has always been home to a far greater number of coal miners, railroad workers, laundresses, government surveyors, tie hacks, school teachers and yes, cowboys - the real kind, who worked long hours for something like maybe 50 cents a day if Western's data is accurate.

Nor has Wyoming been particularly behind the times. Once upon a time, we were somewhat ahead of them. For example, as I personally learned for the first time in Pushed Off the Mountain, Cheyenne was one of the first cities in the United States to have electric lighting, and was also home to the first Carnegie Library built west of the Mississippi! We can't go visit that library building now, though, of course - in a fit of revisionism in the 1950s and 60s, the city of Cheyenne underwent a thorough and ruthless program of demolishing buildings that didn't promote the cowboy image.