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Forty-some-odd years after the advent of New Western History, volume editor Brenden W. Rensink suggests it is time to refocus scholarly attention on the “Modern West.” He asserts that “the twenty-first-century West straddles multiple modern frontiers, not the least of which is the temporal frontier between our unsettled past and uncertain future” (xxxi). The thirteen chapters in this multidisciplinary work—most resulting from a 2019 seminar at the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies—ably examine this idea. Three of them focus specifically on matters relating to agriculture.In “Vulnerable Harvests,” historian David D. Vail explores the environmental hazards that confront agriculturists on the Great Plains in an era of “larger climactic changes” (31). While the threats of fire, drought, flood, and polluted aquifers are not new, the modern dilemma is that farmers and ranchers face “more intense versions” of such events than ever before (33). Vail argues that John Wesley Powell accurately described the West as a “region of limits” (34). While this message seems harsh, he goes on to suggest that the Great Plains Agricultural Council—an entity created during the New Deal—continues to explore problems and seek solutions in order maintain healthy agriculture throughout the region.In “Agritourism as a Land-Saving Action in the New West,” business analyst Jeffrey M. Widener focuses on entrepreneurial activities in the Grand Valley of Colorado's Western Slope. He suggests that agritourism—a new version of a nineteenth-century idea—offers “educational experiences” to an increasingly urban public; it also encourages water conservation and creates “a boom for small-town economic development” (170). In western Colorado, famous peaches, wineries, U-pick operations, farmers’ markets, breweries, and distilleries all generate significant income for a largely rural region. Widener employs state and federal economic data to support agritourism's positive financial impact, and he uses state and local media to highlight the variety of activities this region offers visitors. Whether the Grand Valley experience offers a blueprint for other—perhaps less charismatic—regions is not part of this discussion.One of the more powerful essays in the volume is “Toxins in the Fields.” Historian Taylor Cozzens explores environmental justice for California farmworkers, and he makes the work of the California Rural Legal Assistance organization central to this discussion. He suggests that scholarship in this vein has focused primarily on Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers. While the United Farm Workers is important, that organization never stood alone. California Rural Legal Assistance was founded in 1966 as a “private, nonprofit agency of lawyers and Spanish-speaking community workers” (223). Its strategies included educating workers about risk, filing lawsuits, and prodding the Environmental Protection Agency to move faster on farmworker issues.Here, environmental justice and matters of race and ethnicity overlap. In an age of successful lawsuits against pesticide and herbicide manufacturers, Cozzens argues that Latino farmworkers have yet to receive the “same level of attention” that other groups appreciate, despite their constant proximity to such chemicals (220). Since the 1950s, these generally low-paid workers and their communities have faced enormous risks from the copious use of over sixteen thousand pesticides sprayed on the crops they pick. Effects of excessive chemical contact include high rates of cancer as well as sudden mass poisonings. In the twenty-first century, California Rural Legal Assistance is addressing other threats to Latino communities including the proximity of waste management facilities to farmworkers’ neighborhoods.There is a lot to like about this volume, and it will certainly be a good addition to library holdings on college campuses. It includes a concise New West historiography penned by Rensink in the introduction, a foreword by Patricia Nelson Limerick, and an afterword by Frank Bergon. More importantly, there are ten other well-constructed essays that focus on environmental matters, Indigenous identity, Southwest Borderlands history, the urban West, and gender and politics. Additionally, the volume asks good questions about the state of western history in the curriculum. Generally, the nineteenth-century West and the twentieth-century West are explored in separate classes. The collective work of all the volume's contributors suggests it is a good time to recognize that the twenty-first century is already nearly a quarter century old. Because of its broad scope of topics and its consistent focus on the past, present, and future, this work may serve well as a reader to bring the regional discussion current.