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Blue Desert
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...more
Paperback, 179 pages
Published
April 1st 1988
by University of Arizona Press
(first published September 1st 1986)
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Ed Abbey at a newspaper desk
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. (It's really the best way to describe Bowden in general, in fact.)
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.
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. (It's really the best way to describe Bowden in general, in fact.)
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.
This book felt very real to me, very true. Not in the since of a work of nonfiction but as a convoy of emotions about the seemingly intangible place, the desert. The author uses his stories to illustrate the shifting of times in the Sunbelt and Southwest. Bowden captures spirit and sense of place of the desert through a combination of his personal struggles moving through the landscape, time to see it change, and will to do so.
So much for blue getting you down...
So much for blue getting you down...
A favorite. Several stories about the population explosion in the west and its effect on desert species, human traditions and natural resources - the darker side of the Sunbelt.
I read this book in college but if you love the desert like I do and want to understand the backdrop of Arizona as well as the immigration issue than it is a good one to add to your list.
Everything is true, and sometimes lyrical. But it makes me wonder again what this kind of book looks like when it's written by a woman.
May 18, 2013
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Feb 09, 2013
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review of another edition
Shelves:
nonfiction,
journalism,
american,
southwest,
nature,
desert,
environment,
human,
ecology,
sonoran
Sep 13, 2012
Sandra
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Larry
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5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
essays-environment,
history
Jun 23, 2012
Carol Hurst
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review of another edition
Shelves:
environment,
southwest-us
Jun 10, 2012
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CHARLES BOWDEN’s journalism appears regularly in Harper’s GQ, and other national publications. He is the author of several previous books of nonfiction, including Down by the River.
In more than a dozen groundbreaking books and many articles, Charles Bowden has blazed a trail of fire from the deserts of the Southwest to the centers of power where abstract ideas of human nature hold sway — and to t...more
More about Charles Bowden...
In more than a dozen groundbreaking books and many articles, Charles Bowden has blazed a trail of fire from the deserts of the Southwest to the centers of power where abstract ideas of human nature hold sway — and to t...more
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