The Sonoran Desert: A Literary Field Guide

""It's also a book to get away with. Let the rest of the country rant and rave and post and tweet and babble. The writers inside these pages aren't listening. They are too busy getting out there and getting lost, naming plants and animals, teaching and learning, and doing the vital work of mapping their place."" —David Gessner, author of All the Wild That Remains: Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner, and the American West ""The Sonoran Desert: A Literary Field Guide brings to life the beauty, strangeness, and biodiversity of the plants, invertebrates, birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians that make the Sonoran Desert their home. It is as charming as it is informative, even if you live nowhere near a desert. What a wonderful resource this book is."" —Ann Fisher-Wirth, co-editor of The Ecopoetry Anthology ""Forget what you think you know about deserts—or field guides. This is something entirely unexpected and entirely necessary. Among the fairy duster and devil's claw, bobcat and butter-butt—among the tears of laughter and lament—you'll rediscover another awesome creature that has long found sustenance in the desert: the human creative spirit."" —John T. Price, author of Man Killed by Pheasant: And Other Kinships ""A book of delights for the mind and spirit, this is what a field guide ought to be. What better way to truly see a place than through the unblinking eyes of literature? What better way to truly love a place than through the embrace of ecology? Put them together, as Magrane and Cokinos have brilliantly done, and here is their irresistible invitation to the spectacular desert."" —Kathleen Dean Moore, author of Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature