Desert Passages: Encounters with the American Desert [Idioma Inglés]: Encounters with the American Deserts (Revised) - Softcover

"A small, bright gem of a book. She moves easily from the broad historical background to close textual analysis in a prose that is always sharp, lively, incisive, and readable. . . . succeeds splendidly in making the desert a rich environment for cultural history." A small, bright gem of a book. She moves easily from the broad historical background to close textual analysis in a prose that is always sharp, lively, incisive, and readable. . . . succeeds splendidly in making the desert a rich environment for cultural history. This is an important book. It is also a beautifully written book, and it takes its major energies not only from its scholarship, intelligence, and graceful writing but also from that genre of deep, personal, disciplined engagement from which proceeds the best work in American studies. . . . reminds me very much of Henry Nash Smiths Virgin Land.

This lively book traces the development of American attitudes toward the desert using case studies from the writings of John C Fr+(c)mont, William Lewis Manly, Mark Twain, William Ellsworth Smythe, John Van Dyke, George Wharton James, Joseph Wood Krutch, and Edward Abbey.