Caprock Canyonlands: Journeys into the Heart of the Southern Plains, Twentieth Anniversary Edition (Volume 23)

by Dan Flores, Annie Proulx (Foreword), Thomas R. Dunlap (Afterword)

Twenty years ago, Dan Flores’s Caprock Canyonlands became one of the first books ever to treat the flat, arid landscape of the southern High Plains as a place of uncommon beauty and enduring spirit. Now a classic, Caprock Canyonlands has been favorably compared by readers to the work of such icons of nature and environmental writing as William Bartram, Aldo Leopold, John Muir, and Henry David Thoreau.

Containing the author's stunning photography, a foreword by Pulitzer Prize–winning author Annie Proulx, author of "Brokeback Mountain," an afterword by environmental historian Thomas R. Dunlap, and a new preface by the author, this twentieth anniversary edition makes available to a new generation of readers Flores's knowledgeable and heartfelt narrative of the canyons and badlands of eastern New Mexico and western Oklahoma and Texas. He evokes the history and natural history that shaped the region, drawing upon geology, mythology, botany, art, history and natural history that shaped the region, drawing upon geology, mythology, botany, art, history, and literature.

" Caprock Canoynlands keeps its place on our bookshelves . . . for its exploration of a deeply human the search for the beauty of the earth, the depth and strength of our ties to it, and the ways those appear in a particular landscape . . . here illuminated by love."--from the afterword by Thomas R. Dunlap

232 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1990

About the author

Dan Flores is an environmental writer who from 1992 to 2014 held the A. B. Hammond Chair in the History of the American West at the University of Montana. A native of Louisiana and currently a resident of Santa Fe, New Mexico, he has written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and Time Magazine. Along with appearances on Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown on CNN and on Joe Rogan's podcasts, he was a consultant for and is featured in Ken Burns's 2023 documentary on the story of the American buffalo. Flores's eleven books and numerous essays have won nearly three-dozen literary prizes. His most recent works are American Serengeti: The Last Big Animals of the Great Plains, winner of the Stubbendieck Distinguished Book Prize in 2017; Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History, a 2017 New York Times Bestseller that won the Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award and was a Finalist for PEN America’s E. O. Wilson Prize in Literary Science Writing; and Wild New World: The Epic Story of Animals and People in America, a Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2022.

Reviews

[AJ Senchack · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very up close, intimate introduction to the beautiful, but little experienced by the public, South Plains canyonlands. Written by a man who not only deeply loves the Llanos but has walked and lived in the Llanos for years—a valuable, irreplaceable landscape that should have been made a national park years ago.

[Bob Sharpe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this book up at a library book sale years ago. It's an absolutely fabulous look at that part of west Texas that tumbles off the Llano Estacado to the east. If you love this part of the world or just want to learn more about it, this is a must read.