Blue Desert
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Book Overview
In the promised land of the Sunbelt, people come by the thousands to escape the crush of Eastern cities and end up duplicating the very world they have fled. Can the land remain unchanged? In Blue Desert, Charles Bowden presents a view of the Southwest that seeks to measure how rapid growth has taken its toll on the land. Writing with a reporter's objectivity and a desert rat's passion, Bowden takes us into the streets as well as the desert to depict not a fragile environment but the unavoidable reality of abuse, exploitation, and human cruelty. Blue Desert shows us the Sunbelt's darker side as it has developed in recent times-where "the land always makes promises of aching beauty and the people always fail the land"-and defies us to ignore it. Blue Desert has no boundaries, no terrain, no topographical coordinates; it is a state of mind inescapable to one who sees change and knows that nothing can be done to stop it.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:0816510814
ISBN13:9780816510818
Release Date:April 1988
Publisher:Univ of Chicago Behalf of U of Arizona Press
Length:179 Pages
Weight:0.61 lbs.
Dimensions:0.6" x 5.5" x 8.4"
Customer Reviews
4 ratings
Great Disciple of Edard Abbey
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 15 years ago
This author follows in the footsteps of Edward Abbey (and many others) who accepts nature "as it is" and finds glory in that acceptance. This is a fabulous book, and I'm surprised it is so under appreciated--perhaps a result of not having been promoted very well.
Fantastic Book
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 19 years ago
I read this in a college class years ago. Since then the book has stayed with me. I grew up in Arizona and when I left it I found that this book was one of the things that guided my rememberences of it. When moved back to Arizona over a decade later I reread this book and found it to be even more engaging and relevent. Most Arizonans are new to the state. They have no basis, no connection to it. They bring their values, their limited perspective. They buy a brand new home on the outskirts of Phoenix next to the desert but have no basis for appreciating and understanding their new home. This book provides that reference -- or at least it provides anchors. Those anchors may be dark at times but there's a lot here: guano, Ajo, suicides on tribal lands... Mostly though it is the desert that Bowden explains. "Much like a coal miner's canary, by the time the rest of us realize what he's talking about it may be too late."
Ed Abbey at a newspaper desk
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 19 years ago
That's the best way to describe much of what Bowden writes here, since most of it comes from his time on the police desk at the Tucson Citizen. And it, and his nature essays, are in Abbey's vein without being in any way derivative. Watch him recreate the treks the mojados take across the Sonoran Desert. Here him renarrate some of his crime story coverage. Let him shine a flashlight on a bit of Tucson.
Azure skies are blue in the desert, as are bruises
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 21 years ago
Again, Bowden hands us a mirror, and what we see is ugly. Carving a swathe from Palm Springs to Ajo to Mexico, the author presses us along the eroding path of man and beast in the desert Southwest. Although doomed, a certain eloquence precedes their demise. The book's organization by chapter (Bats, Antelope, Black, Blue and so forth), although uncharacteristic, does nothing to dilute the sting and lingering ache of Bowden's biting exposition.
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