Desert Passages: Encounters With the American Desert

Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.A.: University of New Mexco Press, 2001. Firsst Edition Stated . Trade Paperback. Very Good. 218 Pages Indexed. Evidence of label removal on front endpaper. No other marks or stamps and interior text pages are flawless. Deserts represent nature in its extreme. Studies of American attitudes toward nature have generally dealt with more accommodating environments; this book adds a new dimension to American environmental history. Tracing the development of American attitudes toward the desert, the author uses case studies from the writings of eight individuals, from John C. Fremont and Mark Twain in the mid-nineteenth century, to Joseph Wood Krutch and Edward Abbey in the mid- to late-twentieth century. In the nineteenth century, the southwestern deserts alarmed and even angered Americans. The desert was the greatest obstruction to American expansion and to the nation's optimistic belief in Manifest Destiny. The scarcity of food and water, along with the unfamiliar and alien landscape and often understandably hostile Indians, not only threatened the lives of the overland travelers but also shook their faith in natural abundance. Admitted nature-lovers were often desert-haters. The shifting attitudes, from fear and hatred of the desert, to the desire to get rid of it through irrigation, to acceptance and even glorification have followed the erosion of nineteenth-century optimism to twentieth-century despair over the national destiny. Only in the twentieth century, the author discovers, has the desert appreciator emerged. That is someone who sees the desert as an aesthetic spectacle or an instructive microcosm of the natural order. Understanding of the desert seems inversely correlated to our desire to control the environment and make it suit our purposes. This book is for anyone interested in the history and literature of the American West. Contents in Nine Chapters: John C. Fremont, William Lewis Manly, Mark Twain, William Ellsworth Smythe, John Van Dyke, George Wharton James, Joseph Wood Krutch, Edward Abbey, and The Significance of Deserts in American History. Plus Notes nd Bibliography.