Alberta Readers' Choice Award

Alberta Readers' Choice Award Top 5

"The Weekender Effect :
Hyperdevelopment in Mountain Towns"
by Robert Sandford (January 2009)

As cities continue to grow at unprecedented rates, more and more people are looking for peaceful, weekend retreats in mountain or rural communities. More often than not, these retreats are found in and around resorts or places of natural beauty. As a result, what once were "small towns" are fast becoming "mini cities", complete with expensive housing, fast food, traffic snarls and environmental damage, all with little or no thought for the importance of local history, local people and local culture.

The Weekender Effect is a passionate plea for considered development in these bedroom communities and for the necessary preservation of local values, cultures and landscapes.

Reviews
"What happens to paradise when you carve it up into lots and sell it? Bob Sandford writes about it with clarity and a deep love of the places he knows so well. Sandford's story of one town's mutation from a quiet mountain haven to an overcrowded, generic 'outpost of globalization' is essential reading for those who care about community and our last few glorious spaces." -- Thomas Wharton, author of Icefields, Salamander and The Logogryph

"Equal parts manifesto, meditation, and love song to mountain communities everywhere, this calmly passionate book belongs in every house, condo, tent and backpack in the mountain West and on university courses on nature writing, the environment, community, citizenship, sense of place, human geography and many more. This is essential reading for anyone who lives in, lusts after or loves the mountains." -- Pamela Banting, President, Association for Literature, the Environment and Culture in Canada

About the Author
Robert William Sandford is an ecological historian, an expert on Western water resources and author of Water, Weather and the Mountain West (Rocky Mountain Books, 2007). He lives in Alberta.

About Rocky Mountain Books
Rocky Mountain Books is a regional publisher of non-fiction books located in Calgary, Alberta, one hour's drive from the Canadian Rocky Mountains. A member of the Book Publishers' Association of Alberta, Rocky Mountain Books has been publishing outdoor recreation books since 1979. Started with an emphasis on hiking, climbing and skiing guides to various areas in the Canadian Rockies, the company is slowly expanding its scope to include paddling books, safety manuals, Calgary-area books and true stories about the early days of Canadian mountaineering.

In January 2002, Rocky Mountain Books joined the BC-based Heritage Group of publishers that includes Heritage House Publishing and TouchWood Editions.

For more information about Rocky Mountain Books, visit http://www.rmbooks.com.