The rolling, billowing, delicate landscape of Nebraska's Sandhills; the tombstone of Billy the Kid-stolen so often that it must be caged and shackled-in Fort Sumner, New Mexico; an intercontinental ballistic missile trundling down a highway under heavy guard in Weld County, Colorado; cottonwoods and cranes, faded hotels and abandoned trailers painted aqua and purple; the ghosts of Pawnees, Cheyennes, and Kiowas and generations of settlers whose descendants now grouse in a cafe in Heimdahl, North Dakota, or roar off to a bikers convention in Sturgis, South Dakota. These are some of the things...