The New Desert Reader: Descriptions of America's Arid RegionsPeter Wild The New Desert Reader brings together a historical cross section of writing about the American Southwest in selections that demonstrate how thinking about American deserts has changed from the earliest times to the present day. Beginning with the centuries-old legends of the Tohono O'Odham Indians, it moves through the foresighted observations of John Wesley Powell, one-armed explorer of the Grand Canyon; continues with the delicate appreciations of Mary Austin and Joseph Wood Krutch; includes examples of the keen activist writings of Wallace Stegner and Edward Abbey; and finishes with such contemporary desert writers as Tony Hillerman and others. A slow change in outlook dominates the book, as attitudes shift from viewing the desert as a place to be despised or exploited to an appreciation of it as a special place, an arena of highly complex natural communities, and a wild refuge for the human body and soul. Comprehensive and brightly informative, The New Desert Reader will be invaluable to anyone interested in the history, literature, and beauty of North America's treasured desert places. |
Contents
Where God is and man is not | 1 |
1 First dreamers | 7 |
2 Two dreams meet | 21 |
3 Derringdo | 31 |
4 The democratization of horrors | 45 |
5 Famine sits enthroned | 55 |
6 The privileged tourist | 67 |
7 Moon mania | 78 |
15 Something stood still in my soul | 184 |
16 Regional wholeness | 197 |
17 A wild country to be young in | 211 |
18 Gods hand in the sky | 223 |
19 The geography of hope | 234 |
20 The ghost of radicals past | 247 |
21 Waking up to eternity | 260 |
22 The esthetic of detachment | 275 |
8 Into the labyrinths | 92 |
9 Seeing with new eyes | 106 |
10 The desert sublime | 123 |
11 The southwest as show biz | 135 |
12 Second thoughts | 141 |
13 The desert as art | 158 |
14 A child of the earth and moon | 166 |
23 Changing genuine desert mysteris | 290 |
24 Teetering on the edge | 302 |
Where we are | 306 |
311 | |
319 | |
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Common terms and phrases
Aldo Leopold American animals Apaches Arid Region Arizona beauty boat bush cactus camp caƱon Chee cliffs color Colorado River corn cowboys coyote Craig creosote bush D. H. Lawrence dark Dashee deer desert distance Dyke earth Edward Abbey Elder Brother eyes feet fire forests Gilpin Grand Canyon grass Greeley green ground hills Hopi horses human hundred Indians irrigation John Wesley Powell killed land landscape Leopold live looked Mary Austin mesas mesquite Mexico miles Mojave moon morning mountain nation nature never night once Park Pattie plains plant Plateau rain reached Reyner Banham road rock sand seemed seen side snow soil Southwest spring Stegner streams things timber tion Tony Hillerman trail trees turned Tuve Utah Valley Wallace Stegner walls West wild wilderness William Gilpin wonder writing York young