Download or read book A Full Life in a Small Place and Other Essays from a Desert Garden written by Janice Emily Bowers and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2015-11-01 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The frustrations and pleasures of gardening are evident; its implications for life are more subtle, lurking under a leaf or buried in a compost pile. Janice Emily Bowers senses these implications, and communicates them as only a fine writer can. In A Full Life in a Small Place, she shows how backyard gardening opens up a broader appreciation of both life and living. Her observations on organic gardening inspire further meditations on nature and wildlife, and demonstrate how gardens both complicate and enrich our lives. In their entirety, these sixteen essays ask how we shall live, and recognize that "before we can determine how, we need to find out why."
Download or read book Uneasy Rider written by Mike Bryan and published by VNR AG. This book was released on 1997 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Engagingly curious open-mindedness . . . an amiable deadpan worthy of Richard Ford." --Pico Iyer, Time in this offbeat and original road book, cultural observer Mike Bryan takes issue with the traditional idea that the "real" America is to be found somewhere on our scenic backroads. He argues instead that it is right out in the open on the interstates, and he travels the big highways of the Southwest to prove the point. Bryan engages motel operators, state troopers, and traveling salesmen. He discovers the world's only "No Smoking" ranch; hobnobs with elusive novelist Cormac McCarthy; spars with Bob Sundown, who prefers his covered wagon to any car. Between encounters he contemplates everything from America's pioneering spirit to its history of road building. In the end, he discovers that the interstates, far from producing the homogenous society he feared, nourish a rich community of eccentrics. And that ultimately, as this deeply romantic travelogue shows, there is no such thing as an "ordinary American." "A wonderful writer, he manages to transmit his enjoyment of the places and people he encounters." --Austin American-Statesman "From the Trade Paperback edition.
Download or read book Sonoran Desert Plants written by Raymond M. Turner and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2022-02-08 with total page 523 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sonoran Desert, a fragile ecosystem, is under ever-increasing pressure from a burgeoning human population. This ecological atlas of the region's plants, a greatly enlarged and full revised version of the original 1972 atlas, will be an invaluable resource for plant ecologists, botanists, geographers, and other scientists, and for all with a serious interest in living with and protecting a unique natural southwestern heritage. An encyclopedia as well as an atlas, this monumental work describes the taxonomy, geographic distribution, and ecology of 339 plants, most of them common and characteristic trees, shrubs, or succulants. Also included is valuable information on natural history and ethnobotanical, commercial, and horticultural uses of these plants. The entry for each species includes a range map, an elevational profile, and a narrative account. The authors also include an extensive bibliography, referring the reader to the latest research and numerous references of historical importance, with a glossary to aid the general reader. Sonoran Desert Plants is a monumental work, unlikely to be superseded in the next generation. As the region continues to attract more people, there will be an increasingly urgent need for basic knowledge of plant species as a guide for creative and sustainable habitation of the area. This book will stand as a landmark resource for many years to come.
Download or read book Outdoors in the Southwest written by Andrew Gulliford and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2014-04-18 with total page 607 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More college students than ever are majoring in Outdoor Recreation, Outdoor Education, or Adventure Education, but fewer and fewer Americans spend any time in thoughtful, respectful engagement with wilderness. While many young people may think of adrenaline-laced extreme sports as prime outdoor activities, with Outdoors in the Southwest, Andrew Gulliford seeks to promote appreciation for and discussion of the wild landscapes where those sports are played. Advocating an outdoor ethic based on curiosity, cooperation, humility, and ecological literacy, this essay collection features selections by renowned southwestern writers including Terry Tempest Williams, Edward Abbey, Craig Childs, and Barbara Kingsolver, as well as scholars, experienced guides, and river rats. Essays explain the necessity of nature in the digital age, recount rafting adventures, and reflect on the psychological effects of expeditions. True-life cautionary tales tell of encounters with nearly disastrous flash floods, 900-foot falls, and lightning strikes. The final chapter describes the work of Great Old Broads for Wilderness, the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative, and other exemplars of “wilderness tithing”—giving back to public lands through volunteering, stewardship, and eco-advocacy. Addressing the evolution of public land policy, the meaning of wilderness, and the importance of environmental protection, this collection serves as an intellectual guidebook not just for students but for travelers and anyone curious about the changing landscape of the West.
Download or read book Design with the Desert written by Richard Malloy and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2016-04-19 with total page 607 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Typical development in the American Southwest often resulted in scraping the desert lands of the ancient living landscape, to be replaced with one that is human-made and dependent on a large consumption of energy and natural resources. This transdisciplinary book explores the natural and built environment of this desert region and introduces development tools for shaping its future in a more sustainable way. It offers valuable insights to help promote ecological balance between nature and the built environment in the American Southwest-and in other ecologically fragile regions around the world.
Download or read book A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert written by Patricia Wentworth Comus and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2015-11-17 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The landscape of the Sonoran Desert Region varies dramatically from parched desert lowlands to semiarid tropical forests and frigid subalpine meadows... "A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert" takes readers deep into its vast expanse, looking closely at the relationships of plants and animals with the land and people, through time and across landscapes"--
Download or read book Landscape Archaeology written by Rebecca Yamin and published by Univ. of Tennessee Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the editors note, "This volume includes many searching looks at the landscape, not just to understand ourselves, but to understand the context for other peoples' lives in other times, to unravel the landscapes they created and explain the meanings embedded in them.".
Download or read book Getting Over the Color Green written by Scott Slovic and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Desert vistas are often deemed vacant, inhospitable wastelands. Don't suggest that to Joy Harjo, Pat Mora, or other contemporary southwestern writers. In these arid stretches, often devoid of green, today's southwestern writers see pyrotechnic colors and Gothic shapes that excite and often overwhelm the imagination. And they capture this excitement in words that fix these desert images in the minds of readers who may too often look at the world through green-colored glasses. This anthology of contemporary nature writing from the Greater Southwest brings together a host of writers including peers of Edward Abbey such as Charles Bowden and Ann Zwinger and representatives of a new generation of writers such as Rick Bass and Terry Tempest Williams. The book is an eclectic blend of nonfiction and fiction, field notes and poetry, through which artists of diverse backgrounds both celebrate and illuminate the unique vitality and complexity of southwestern literature— proving that green is only one of many colors on their palette. The selections included here range all across the southwestern landscape and explore adventures in the wild, topics in natural history, living close to the land, and efforts at conservation and restoration. They clearly demonstrate that there is grace and beauty in this often-maligned part of the world— both in the human traditions that have developed in the region and in the natural features of the desert itself.
Download or read book Bringing Home the Wild written by Juliet C. Stromberg and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2023 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book follows a two-decade journey in urban conservation gardening on a four-acre irrigated parcel in Phoenix, Arizona, from the perspective of a retired botanist and her partner. Through a playful use of language and humor, the book not only introduces the plants who are feeding them, buffering the climate, and elevating their moods but also presents the animals and fungi who are pollinating the plants and recycling the waste. This work shows all of us the importance of observing, appreciating, and learning from one's surrounding ecosystem"--
Download or read book What Wildness Is This written by Susan Wittig Albert and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2007-03-01 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of short stories, poems, and essays written by women who share the experiences of living in the Southwest.
Download or read book Frequently Asked Questions about the Saguaro written by Janice Emily Bowers and published by Western National Parks Association. This book was released on 2003 with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do you pronounce SAGUARO? How tall do saguaros grow? How much do saguaros weigh? Learn the answer to these and many other questions in Frequently Asked Questions About the Saguaro. This easy-to-read book provides brief well researched answers to the questions most asked about these giants of the Sonoran Desert. Readers will learn about the climate that best fosters saguaro growth. They'll see how birds and other critters use saguaros for their homes. And they'll also find fascinating information about the plant's flowers and fruits, including the best time of year to see their magnificent bloom and how native people make the fruit into a delicious syrup. Vividly illustrated with drawings and color photography, Frequently Asked Questions About the Saguaro is a great resource on an important and beautiful cactus.
Download or read book An Extraordinary Year of Ordinary Days written by Susan Wittig Albert and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-06-04 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Eudora Welty's memoir of childhood to May Sarton's reflections on her seventieth year, writers' journals offer an irresistible opportunity to join a creative thinker in musing on the events—whether in daily life or on a global scale—that shape our lives. In An Extraordinary Year of Ordinary Days, best-selling mystery novelist Susan Wittig Albert invites us to revisit one of the most tumultuous years in recent memory, 2008, through the lens of 365 ordinary days in which her reading, writing, and thinking about issues in the wider world—from wars and economic recession to climate change—caused her to reconsider and reshape daily practices in her personal life. Albert's journal provides an engaging account of how the business of being a successful working writer blends with her rural life in the Texas Hill Country and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of New Mexico. As her eclectic daily reading ranges across topics from economics, food production, and oil and energy policy to poetry, place, and the writing life, Albert becomes increasingly concerned about the natural world and the threats facing it, especially climate change and resource depletion. Asking herself, "What does it mean? And what ought I do about it?", she determines practical steps to take, such as growing more food in her garden, and also helps us as readers make sense of these issues and consider what our own responses might be.
Download or read book A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert written by Steven J. Phillips and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 676 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert provides the most complete collection of Sonoran Desert natural history information ever compiled and is a perfect introduction to this biologically rich desert of North America."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Literary Nevada written by Cheryll Glotfelty and published by University of Nevada Press. This book was released on 2016-06-01 with total page 831 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over 200 writings about Nevada with selections from Native American tales to contemporary writings on urban experience and environmental concerns. The state of Nevada embodies paradox and contradiction—home to one of the fastest-growing cities in the nation and to isolated ranches scattered across a sparsely populated backcountry. Nevada is a place where the lust for sudden wealth has prompted both wild mining booms and glittering casinos, and where forbidding atomic test sites coexist with alluring tourist meccas. The variety and distinctiveness of Nevada’s landscape and peoples have inspired writers from the beginning of immigrant contact with the region. This contact has produced abundant literary wealth that includes the rich oral traditions of Native American peoples and an amazing spectrum of contemporary voices. Literary Nevada is the first comprehensive literary anthology of Nevada. It contains over 200 selections ranging from traditional Native American tales, explorers’ and emigrants’ accounts, and writing from the Comstock Lode and other mining boomtowns, as well as compelling fiction, poetry, and essays from throughout the state’s history. There is work by well-known Nevada writers such as Sarah Winnemucca, Mark Twain, and Robert Laxalt, by established and emerging writers from all parts of the state, and by some nonresident authors whose work illuminates important facets of the Nevada experience. The book includes cowboy poetry, travel writing, accounts of nuclear Nevada, narratives about rural life and urban life in Las Vegas and Reno, poetry and fiction from the state’s best contemporary writers, and accounts of the special beauty of wild Nevada’s mountains and deserts. Editor Cheryll Glotfelty provides insightful introductions to each section and author. The book also includes a photo gallery of selected Nevada writers and a generous list of suggested further readings. Nevada has inspired an exceptionally rich panorama of fine writing and a dazzling array of literary voices. The selections in Literary Nevada will engage and delight readers while revealing the complex and exciting diversity of the state’s history, people, and life.
Download or read book Contemporary Authors written by Terri M. Rooney and published by Contemporary Authors. This book was released on 1998-05 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Your students and users will find biographical information on approximately 300 modern writers in this volume of Contemporary Authors®. Authors in this volume include: Janet Dawson Patrice Gaines Isabella Rossellini Markus Wolf
Download or read book San Francisco Review of Books written by and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book ICASALS Newsletter written by International Center for Arid and Semi-arid Land Studies and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
