The first essay looks at "The West as a Human Problem" (John L. Sorenson) and compares the region with less developed countries where resources have been exploited for the sake of areas beyond the locales where the resources are located. The second essay similarly considers the "Paradoxes of Western Energy Development: Sociocultural Factors" (Stan Albrecht).

There are essays about a small rural town (Edward A. Geary on Huntington, Utah), the contrast between rural communities and a spreading metropolis (G. Wesley Johnson on Phoenix, Arizona), the economics of family life—the large polygamous family of Heber C. Kimball, which was a community of itself (Stanley B. Kimball), and the families of Spring City (Michael S. Raber) and Heber City (Jessie L. Embry)— and on business and law in Cache and Weber Valleys, both of which benefitted from outside capital (Leonard J. Arrington). Larry R. Gerlach's article on a lynching in Salt Lake City indicates how slowly law enforcement developed in the West.

Jessie L. Embry is the assistant director of the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University. Howard A. Christy is BYU's senior editor of scholarly publications.