Results by title

"The desert may seem timeless from within the Yellow Circle tonight, but the permanence of the surrounding landscape is only an illusion. Even the land is alive here, constantly changing and evolving as do all living things. Nothing here is 'finished.' Everything around us—the plants, the animals, the rocks, and the terrain itself—is in the process of becoming something else. And, of course, so are we. None of us around the campfire tonight are the same people we were yesterday, or will be tomorrow."—from the book

The Broken Land surveys the geological phenomena of the magnificent Great Basin landscape of western Utah, Nevada, eastern California, and adjacent regions. Each chapter focuses on a locality or area that provides insight into the deep history of one of North America's most remote regions—one of its continental margins. It is the only book available covering the geology of the entire Great Basin. Written for anyone with a casual to serious interest in natural history, The Broken Land conveys Frank DeCourten's awe at the story written in the rock of the basin.

America’s current "war on drugs" is not the nation’s first. In the mid-nineteenth century, opium-smoking was decried as a major social and public health problem, especially in the West. Although China faced its own epidemic of opium addiction, only a very small minority of Chinese immigrants in America were actually involved in the opium business. It was in Anglo communities that the use of opium soon spread and this growing use was deemed a threat to the nation’s entrepreneurial spirit and to its growing mportance as a world economic and military power. The Opium Debate examines how the spread of opium-smoking fueled racism and created demands for the removal of the Chinese from American life. This meticulously researched study of the nineteenth-century drug-abuse crisis reveals the ways moral crusaders linked their antiopium rhetoric to already active demands for Chinese exclusion. Until this time, anti-Chinese propaganda had been dominated by protests against the economic and political impact of Chinese workers and the alleged role of Chinese women as prostitutes. The use of the drug by Anglos added another reason for demonizing Chinese immigrants. Ahmad describes the disparities between Anglo-American perceptions of Chinese immigrants and the somber realities of these people’s lives, especially the role that opium-smoking came to play in the Anglo-American community, mostly among middle- and upper-class women. The book offers a brilliant analysis of the evolution of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, plus important insights into the social history of the nineteenth-century West, the culture of American Victorianism, and the rhetoric of racism in American politics.

Noted writer and photographer Stephen Trimble mixes eloquent accounts of personal experiences with clear explication of natural history. His photographs capture some of the most spectacular but least-known scenery in the western states. The Great Basin Desert sweeps from the Sierra to the Rockies, from the Snake River Plain to the Mojave Desert. "Biogeography" would be one way to sum up Trimble's focus on the land: what lives where, and why. He introduces concepts of desert ecology and discusses living communities of animals and plants that band Great Basin mountains—from the exhilarating emptiness of dry lake-beds to alpine regions at the summits of the 13,000-foot Basin ranges.

This is the best general introduction to the ecology and spirit of the Great Basin, a place where "the desert almost seems to mirror the sky in size," where mountains hold "ravens, bristlecone pines, winter stillness—and unseen, but satisfying, the possibility of bighorn sheep." Trimble's photographs come from the backcountry of this rugged land, from months of exploring and hiking the Great Basin wilderness in all seasons; and his well-chosen words come from a rare intimacy with the West.