The volume accompanies the exhibition “West” by Francesco Jodice, held in Naples at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale from 8 November 2023 to 8 January 2024, and presents the complete version of Jodice's research project, made of seventy pictures. WEST recounts the rise and decline of the last great western empire in a span of time running from the beginning of the Gold Rush (1848) to the collapse of Lehman Brothers (2008). Travelling three times through the deserts of the American West and one of the oldest geological structures on the planet, Jodice builds a story about the exhaustion of a myth.