Central America Books

This book offers a wonderful lesson about what is important in life-friendship and giving. It's a great story for children and adults alike.

The Gold Coin is the story of Juan, a thief of experience, and his journey to find an old woman who gives away gold coins. In his quest to find her to steal away her assumed riches, Juan is forced to experience the helpfulness of strangers, depend on their kindness and enjoy with them the feeling of an honest day's labor. By the end of his travels, he has been transformed by the goodness of the people he has met. When he finally comes face to face with the woman he had intended to rob, he is a different person. Instead of taking her gold, Juan offers to mend her roof. He learns that giving to others allows him to feel rich. The Gold Coin is a great story to read aloud. It is warm and inspiring.

This is an excellent book. I originally found this book in our reading basal. My students loved it! I decided to search for this book as an individual title, and when I found it, I was too excited. I used this book as a read aloud with my 3rd and 4th graders. When I finished and put the book down, my students couldn't wait to get their hands on it. I loved the illustrations as well as the reading skills that I can used to teach particular skills. Great Book!

Alma Flor Ada is an author who writes both in Spanish and English. Her work focuses on action over description. Her communication of the values and qualities of the culture in which she immerses her readers makes her books notable. The Gold Coin tells of a man who is twisted in body and spirit until he is transformed by honest hard work, and caring decent people. The reader is introduced to an inspirational character, Dona Josefa. Although the thief doesn't meet her until the end of the story, it is her model of goodness that shines throughout the story. The illustrations admirably reflect the changes the thief undergoes as his body becomes straighter and his face less pale and angry. There are many surprises seeded throughout the story and the ending is wonderfully satisfying. Although this is an original tale, the writing has the flavor of a folktale and the culture and landscape of Central America are authentically portrayed.

i read this book almost 8 years ago while travelling in central america. i forgot its title then but never forgot its message. i have only just tracked it down - it was worth the wait and what it has to say is every bit as important as i remembered it. perhaps now (post 11th september) it is even more poignant, illustrating the inability of the 'west' to learn from mistakes in its foreign policy, how the lives of others are affected by this and how our complicity in this debases our own humanity. with this book, i understood so much more than i could otherwise have done, the feelings of the people i met in C.Am, particularly in nicaragua. i love the people there, the lack of malice and bitterness they are entitled to, that i felt on their behalf.
it is an essential read, for anyone interested in global politics, for anyone thinking of going travelling there, for anyone...well, for anyone.

This book was required reading for a history course I took at university. It is one of the most memorable books I read while at university; in fact I actually re-read it cover-to-cover while in law school. The writing is entertaining and it has a very clever layout with interesting historical photos and illustrations. The author describes the historical events covered by the book in a fresh and persuasive style which is rarely seen in books about history or politics. I wish Black or other authors would produce more works like this on other periods of history or political topics.

The history of U.S. involvment south of its border is an ugly and painful one, full of rapacious corporations, support for torture and dictatorships, and dripping in racism. Bringing this sordid history to light is Black, who makes the history both entertaining and powerful. In a fast-reading book, loaded with photos, political cartoons, and illustrations, Black manages to swiftly educate Americanos of all kinds about this amazing history. Highly recommended!

It is a crime that George Black's Good Neighbor has been out of print. Written with a wry style and a British detachment from the assumptions of U.S. culture, Black explores the history of what he regards as a neurotic United States romping though Central America from the Spanish American war onward. While I disagree with his premise that there is an irrationality to U.S. behavior in Latin America, my students love this book. Beautifully and intelligently illustrated.

The book arrived as promised in like new condition. I am very pleased with the delivery and the sale process.

This book's central thesis is that Classical Maya civilization collapsed as a result of a drought in Mesoamerica extending throughout the 9th century AD. This particular drought was the local manifestation of Northern Hemisphere weather patterns that the author asserts have been repeated frequently over shorter time periods for thousands of years, even into this century, and which nearly always produce drought in Mesoamerica.

Once you accept the author's evidence for Mesoamerican droughts and their regularity, that evidence provides a parsimonious explanation for the end of Classical Maya civilization. After reading this book, I think many people will accept the evidence and the explanation.

More complex hypotheses, including overpopulation, warfare between Mayan city-states, external invasion, disease, over centralization, exhaustion of a stable environment, and peasant revolt are not needed to explain the collapse. This does not mean that such factors, if they existed, did not influence the course of the collapse, just that the collapse would have happened because of the drought whether or not other factors existed.

To support his thesis, which is clearly stated clearly at the beginning of the book, Dr. Gill takes the reader on a tour of a multitude of scientific disciplines. Each discipline studied adds information about the importance, frequency, possible causes and consequences of drought in Mesoamerican and on civilization and population trends throughout the world. Any one of these tours alone is worth the price of the book, since they are extremely well written and provide the foundation for further study on each topic covered.

In a chapter titled "Geology, Hydrology, and Water," the author describes the geology and hydrology of the Yucatan and the Maya highlands and the major drainage basins, and provides an extensive discussion of the water supply problem and how it was managed in the pre-Columbian period. The basic geology is the standard stuff: seasonal rainfall, permeable limestone, karstic drainage, deep underground fresh water usually inaccessible, except in the north through cenotes and along the east cost from freshwater lakes or lagoons. But, this chapter also explained how the Maya adapted to this environment. For example, the author describes natural surface depressions used as water reservoirs and known as aquadas. The Maya paved many of these small depressions and some were provided with chultunes, bell shaped chambers excavated below the aquada bottom to capture additional water when the aquada was filled. (A single chultun could hold 30,000 liters of water, enough to comfortably supply drinking and cooking water for twenty-five people for one year).

In fact, Mayan city-states and even smaller settlements were designed with water management a primary consideration, with central reservoirs, residential reservoirs, canals, and the terrain and pavement of the city itself all engineered to facilitate the collection and storage of water during the wet season. This was important, because, as explained in a chapter on "Paleoclimatology," small-scale (relative to the great final calamity) droughts were endemic to the Maya area as shown both by Maya water management strategies and more recent evidence from sediment recovered from the bottom of lakes. Records during the Spanish colonial period point to further famines on a regular basis after the conquest. In fact, during the colonial period, population looses from drought in the Yucatan ranged up to 30 or 40%.

In another chapter titled "Volcanoes and Weather" Dr. Gill argues that there is a strong correlation between the eruptions of large volcanoes around the world, and the worldwide weather patterns that lead to drought in Mesoamerica. This particular chapter not only provided evidence to support this correlation, but evidence that the volcanoes may have been a forcing mechanism for those weather patterns. Volcanoes and weather are a topic of some interest to me, and until I read this book, I had trouble finding a good introduction to the study of volcanoes, and to the relationship between volcanoes and weather. Now I have.

To save space and my own energy, I am not going to discuss the chapter on "Thermohaline Circulation." Except, I will say that that I learned enough in that one chapter on North Atlantic deep water formation and three dimensional ocean circulation models for all of the world's oceans to help me understand an article on the subject recently published in the journal Nature. I will also skip lightly over the early chapter titled "Self-Organization" which discusses, among other things, the overall flow of energy in a civilization, and the important roll of exporting entropy to the environment by a civilization to reduce the potentially disruptive entropy in the civilization. I will also skip lightly over the chapter titled "Famine and the Individual" which describes how famine can rapidly lead to the complete collapse of social norms and the massive disruption of "normal" energy flows in any civilization.

Probably the most important or challenging single assertion Dr. Gill makes is changing the timing of the collapse of Chichen Itza. Traditionally dated around 1150 AD, and cited as an example of the ability of some Maya cities to survive the Classical collapse, the author re-dates this event to the 9th century based partly on re-interpretation of inscribed calendar dates attributed to the period after the collapse. This particular assertion is probably one of the most controversial in the book and is critical to the author's basic thesis. I suspect that it will be the focus of considerable argument. In support of this claim, the author provides a new interpretation of the relationship between Chichen Itza and the Toltecs, which itself is probably worth a fair amount of discussion.

I strongly recommend this book to just about anyone with an analytical mind. If you are interested in the general flow of Maya civilization this book has a lot to offer. If you are generally interested in the interplay between climate and civilization, this book also has a lot to offer. If you are just somewhat interested in topics such as global meteorology, volcanoes, tree-ring records in Europe and America, or the debate between uniformitariansm and neocatastrophism in the early study of geology, you will still find useful information that is readily accessible.

Although The Great Maya Droughts by Richardson Gill is a very impressive collection of information, it's not quite what I had expected. Given the title I had expected an archaeological account of recent finds and what they tell of the decline of Maya civilization. Instead the bulk of the book, eleven chapters of it, deals with a wide variety of scientific information having to do with a number of fields: physics, oceanography, complexity theory, meteorology, geology, hydrology, paleoclimatology, and volcanology among them. Not until the last two chapters of the book, and then mostly in summary form, does the author really discuss the archaeological data. For the average reader interested in the Maya and/or in general archaeology this might be a thirty dollar disappointment. Some of the material is rather complex, and although one might be able to work ones way through it on just the explanations the author gives of each topic, it would probably appeal more to those who already have at least some background in these areas. This having been said, though, I have to admit that I loved the book.

The author's primary goal is to introduce the theme of what he terms an energy failure as the cause of the Maya demise. To do this he approaches his topic as a physical scientist. Modern archaeology has come a long way since W. M. Flinders Petrie and A. Layard, and there is as much "hard" science involved in this discipline as digging in the sand. In fact with funds for excavations difficult to come by these days, there is probably far less digging in the sand going on now than there was in the past. Gill seems to be a model of the new archeologist/scientist. Steeped in what E. O. Wilson calls "consilience," the author calls upon data from a variety of fields to supply him with the building blocks he needs to reinforce his thesis.

At first I was a little skeptical of this type of approach, even though I know a fair amount about most of Dr. Gill's supporting subjects. By the time he got to a discussion of the shifting of the ecotomes in Europe during the Roman period (p. 16), I was totally hooked. I had just read a book covering the rise and fall of the Roman occupation in Gaul, and Gill's discussion of it in his work made perfect sense. With his treatment of human culture and its limitations in terms of thermodynamics and its evolution in terms of self organizing criticality, he had completely reeled me in. Like others, I had considered the decay of the Maya centers to be a "multifaceted" problem. Human culture and behavior being as complex as they are-or seem to be-a multidimensional answer to the problem seemed logical. As Gill presents it, however, there is nothing so logical-or so simple-as the destruction of the human animal by a lack of water. As he points out, a person can live for months without eating but only days without water.

The book is well worth the effort, even for those with limited knowledge of the included topics, as long as he/she has the desire to learn something new and isn't afraid of a little work. Furthermore, the bibliography is a mine of useful resources, both books and periodicals. Some are a little old, 1970-1980s, but many are more current. Of the books that I've read from the author's list: Per Bak's How Nature Works is fun, as is Sigurdsson's Melting the Earth. Jered Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel is wonderful, a "must read" sort of book. Both Decker and Decker's Volcanoes and Bullard's Volcanoes of the Earth, though a little old, are interesting and easy to read. Of the journals American Scientist, Archaeology, Nature, Science, and Scientific American should be readily available in most college and urban public libraries. Those like Geology, The Holocene, Hydrobiologia, Hydrology, the Journal of Human Evolution, Journal of Paleoceanography, and Quaternary Research may be available in some university libraries or in their individual department libraries.

For THOSE WRITING PAPERS on archaeology, history, meteorology/climatology, anthropology, ecology, etc. this book would make an instructive source for "how-to-do-it with science." It would make an excellent source of quotes in support of your own themes, a good source for bibliographical material, and a good bibliographical entry for your own paper.

Not an easy book to get through. Certainly not for those who just want an overview of the Maya. Definitely worth it for those with a desire to learn.

Dr. Gill has truly broken new ground with this startling theory on the demise of the Mayan Empire. Why no-one heretofore considered drought as the primary cause of the Mayan disappearance now seems remarkable. His premise debunks the previous and long-held concepts on the mysterious demise of these ancient people and literally re-writes a major chapter in the history of Mexico. Thank you, Dr. Gill for finally shedding light on this dark topic and providing a conclusive answer to what has long been a nebulous and even divisive black hole in the anthropologic annals of North America.

I have seen Dr. Sutherlin speak in Europe in different conferences over the past four years. This exceptional work reflects a true dedication to undertanding sustainable development and environmental policy making in Poland and the Czech Republic. There is no work in print that captures the research and analysis of Sutherlin. This work should be required reading for all interested in Central European environmental issues.

As a member of the environmental movement in Central Europe, I was most pleased to find someone from the West that really understands what has happened in Poland and the Czech Republic since 1989. There is no comparison to what Sutherlin has accomplished in this directly written book. I hope that he follows this work with similar efforts. This book is useful for those in classes, in environmental organizations or those wanting to understand policy making in Central Europe.

Despite the work focusing on Poland and Czech, this work is useful regardless of geography. Its premise is simple: States that are both democratic AND have market economies can still have sound environmental policy if they accept the principle of sustainable development. That is a lesson for all of Europe and this hemisphere. The data assembled in this work is fascinating and the interpretation of the very technical by the author (whose background is probably the social sciences) is nothing short of remarkable. He has blended the hard sciences and the social sciences together in a way that marks the best effort to have true environmental analysis.

This work takes the perspective that 'sustainable development' is the desireable way that the transitional nations of Central Europe should travel. Then, using information he obtained in Poland and the Czech Republic along with data from various state agencies and the United Nations, Sutherlin analyzes how well each nation's environmental policy has or hasn't worked. Additionally, he uses Western Europe and the U.S. as examples of other manners for making policy. The result is somewhat surprising: both Poland and the Czech Republic are doing well in different areas due to various factors. This is a well-developed, easy to follow (despite the complexity of the subject) work that will be interesting and useful to anyone interested in the environment, in general, or Central Europe, specifically.

This book is based on an earlier book by Mr. Mahler, which I used frequently during my 1994-97 posting to Guatemala. I had several guide books, but found that Mr. Mahler's was the one I turned to most frequently. I eventually got to many of the places mentioned in his book, and found that the information he had provided was accurate and useful. I spoke with Mr. Mahler just before leaving Guatemala, and am delighted that he included some of my suggestions in this book, including Los Viejitos Restaurant in Nebaj (look for the green door)--the owner told me she used to cook for Nancy Sinatra!

As the author of this book, I am predictably biased in its favor. However, I feel it's important to say that I spent several months in late 1998 and early 1999 poring over every word, photo, and map to make sure that it was correct, helpful, and informative. Readers will find everything from restaurant and hotel reviews to reports on Spanish schools, craft markets, and Maya ruins. I find Guatemala a fascinating and rewarding country to visit and it remains one of the world's greatest travel bargains. However, since the Peace Accords were signed in 1996 and the guerrilla war ended, more and more people are discovering this place. Therefore, prices will only go up. I'm convinced that there is no better time to see the unspoiled treasures of Guatemala than right now, before the crowds descend. My specialties are the contemporary and ancient cultures of the Maya as well as the national parks of the country. In the latest edition of my book, I've gone to great lengths to include every possible useful tidbit of information on these subjects, from the best place to explore the rainforest to the best way to tour Tikal. As always, I am eager to receive reports from readers, who supply me with some of the best insider information available. Enjoy!

(From Planeta.com Journal) - Reading Richard Mahler is like opening a letter from a well-traveled friend. This is the second edition of a regional classic. Its coverage of environmental issues and travel options is first-rate. This is a must read for any eco traveler.

The investigation of Richard Mahler in Guatemala is above excellent, and I really love all the details of adventure in it. I recommend this book to every tourist and local people, is amazing all the beauty that we have down here. Is very complete, including hotels, restaurants, what to see, what to do in each part of the country. A list of volcanoes, rivers, caves and recommendations of fishing, cycling, kayaking, etc etc. with a list of tourist operators on each issue. Great book!

I saw this book in the bookstore and it's really interesteng. So mesmerizing that I couldn't put it down (thus being late to work). I realized just how much I had missed on my first visit to New Orleans. I plan on going again in Spring and I'm taking this book as a guide of sorts. Full of many great odditites of New Orleans.

If you're going to New Orleans largely because you're a fan of Anne Rice's Vampire and Mayfair Witches novels, then this is an essential.

I used it on my first trip to New Orleans. It includes self-guided tours of the French Quarter and Garden District that include Vampire Chronicle and Mayfair sites respectively without leaving out the must-see unrelated sites and experiences. The only caveat is that zoo fans should be aware that the Audobon is one of the best in the country.

Three types of sites are covered - those related to Anne Rice herself, those used in - or speculated to have inspired locations in - the books, and those where parts of "Interview" were filmed.

With chapters on guided plantation, swamp and cemetary tours, as well as restaurants and hotels (the last including descriptions of ambviance that helped me considerably in my choice of hotel), you'll have everything you need to plan your trip and not miss anything like the Ursuline convent where Louis found Claudia and the Gardiner House that inspired the home that Lestat, Louis and Claudia shared.

Best of all, Ms. Dickinson wants us all to be careful out there in a city that can become ominous if you go too far off the beaten track sans tour group - especially at night. As she wittily reminds us, we're not all as indestructable as Lestat, and if an area - even one that contains an Anne Rice site - is unsafe, she doesn't hesitate to tell us so. Following her advice, you'll see everything you want to see and get home safe and sound.

I gave this to my wife as a gift before our recent trip to New Orleans, and she carried this book everywhere. While any book like this is a bit out-of-date as soon as it is published, it was still very useful for finding all the sites and giving us good background information. One important note though is that Anne Rice is selling off her doll collection and the orphanage, so there is no longer any tour. That was really a disappointment.

Last year, for Christmas 97 we had to go to New Orleans to see my father's family, I was having a a horrible time because of the weather. (We went the year before for Mardi Gras, the weather makes my hair go afro-y; it doesn't help to use your normal hair-care products.) We went to the French Quarter the day we were leaving and pow there was this cool book. I had to get it, I've read all of the Mayfair Witches books. I recommend it to anyone that's ever wondered about where their favorite characters lived.

Very informative with wonderful before and after photos, I am Cuban and remember some of the places in the photos. Would highly recommend it to my friends.

great, easy read yet interesting history of Havana. Wonderful photos and fun highlights of the who's who of that era. The author did a good job of combining the two to make for a brilliant fun read

All Cubans dream of returning to Cuba someday, but sadly the Cuba of the 1950s, when Havana was truly the Paris of the Caribbean has been lost. Gone are the days when Cuba was truly an international destination with first class hotels and hundreds of bars, restaurants, and night clubs -- from sketchy little neighborhood joints to fabulous casinos. Here you could hear Olga Guillot at the Tropicana and see spectacular stage shows under the stars. As today, the streets were filled with the latest American cars; only at that time, many were fresh from Detroit assembly lines. Buildings in even the poorest sections of the city were well kept and crisply painted.

Someday, Havana may regain some of its lost luster. Until then, a new book "Havana Before Castro" takes you back in time to relive this great city at its prime. Author Peter Morruzi has put together a great collection of vintage photos in both color and black and white. The book documents life in Cuba from the beginnings of the Cuban republic to the glory days when locals and tourists packed Sloppy Joe's Bar and La Floridita -- "the cradle of the daiquiri."

In "Havana Before Castro," you'll get a taste of a dynamic city where popular nightspots abounded along the Prado, central Havana's promenade, and along Calle 23 in Havana's Vedado district. A chapter on the Havana Riviera provides stunning images on this resort casino where Cuban sculptors created beautiful pieces of art. The Riviera's lobby is itself a work of art with a breathtaking circular staircase and architectural details that present the best of 50's modern.

We especially liked the chapter on "Life as an Habanero." You can almost smell the aromas of fresh Cuban bread, strong café cubano, and fritas frying on a street corner grill, all carried along the streets of Havana by swift, sea-scented breezes.

"Havana Before Castro" is well researched and well written, providing an engaging read that goes beyond the beautiful photos. For those who remember these glory days, the book is truly a trip back in time. For those who never experienced Cuba before Castro, the book is a revelation: Havana was truly a beautiful, world-class city!

Hope and pray that it can happen again...


THREE GUYS FROM MIAMI
.

Three Guys from Miami Celebrate Cuban: 100 Great Recipes for Cuban Entertaining (Three Guys from Miami)

Three Guys from Miami Cook Cuban

My wife and I escaped Cuba during the early sixties. Almost certain that we might be returning within a month or two (50 years ago) we did not bring along photographs, memories, or keepsakes of any kind.
"Havana Before Castro" is the best collection of memorabilia ever to touch my hands.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. You've made my day!
Andrew J. Rodriguez, author of: "Adios, Havana" a memoir.

I didn't want the book to end! It was fast paced, full of twists and turns. The topic and depth of knowledge by both Lawson and Speers gave it a very real and eerie context. I felt like I was in the airplane at the controls with the lead character. Not a normal place for me to be, but the way they wrote the dialogue I was right there with them. Deserves to be a best seller! Can't wait to see what these characters are up to in the next book! A must read!

This book has so much going for it, various characters, plots, sub plots, etc. It moved along and reminded me of the James Bond series of books written by Ian Fleming. The authors collective backgrounds made it not only a great adventure but truely showed their vast knowledge of subject matter.
A great read! I look forward to reading the next chapter of the Mallory chronicles!

First, to be fair, this is my kind of book. It's a guy book. Not that women would not enjoy it (strong female character), but it's about men- bonding, trust, flying, loving, losing, joy and despair. About being a man, a soldier, a husband and a father. Corny? Perhaps. Could I pick at the book because it's sentences are a little awkward or simplistic? And using flashbacks works well on the screen, but for me (read: village idiot) not too well in books with multiple characters. But that's like avoiding road racing because the harness wrinkles your clothes. I started this book on a Thursday night one chapter, Friday night, another, and woke up with the flu on Saturday. And read the rest of the entire book.

It's one of those books that once you are finished you begin to wonder how another book will hold your interest. All of a sudden all the books you were thinking of reading next become, well, tarnished.

I had a great time, thanks for the ride!

The Hidden Empire is a fast-moving, intriguing novel which combines the military, religious and political worlds in a fascinating way. The authors' extensive backgrounds with the military and intelligence communities are evident as they write a book which, throughout its complex story-line, evolves as a truly believable plot. Deke Mallory and the other characters become indelibly imprinted on the mind of the reader.

I took my family on a driving trip through Montana, and this book proved to be an excellent resource for discovering the somewhat undiscovered, as well as guiding us through the more mainstream sights, attractions, restaurants, and accommodations throughout the state. A must have if you are traveling through the great state of Montana.

Braeking the state up into sections, the author does an excellent job of describing and presenting the various highlights of each. Equal treatment is given to popular and off-the-beaten-path areas, with sufficient detail for each. It made my recent visit more enjoyable!

Hidden Montana appears in its third edition to cover inns, tours, drives, and outdoors explorations throughout the state. From Glacier Park to Yellowstone, this is packed with lesser-known byways. Recommended.

This book was a wonderful guide to the areas of Montana we traveled through. There were several things we would not have seen if it hadn't been for the suggestions in the book and some excellent restaurants we wouldn't have stopped at if they had not been recommended by the book. We plan to get another "hidden" book for our next trip.

I first read this one in 1982 and have returned to it time and again. I, like a couple of other reviewers, cannot understand why this book has not recieved more attention. It is well written, funny, informative and just simply fun to read. It is a collection of tales, stories, or what have you, of the western portion of our country. The author has wonderful insight and certainly knows his subject. I cannot think of a page of this work I did not absolutely enjoy. Highly recommend this one.

I first read this book in the mid-1980s, and have been a huge fan of it ever since. It was out of print from a long time after the original publisher, North Point Press, went out of business. I am delighted that it is now available once more. It deserves to be read by anyone interested in the American West.

This is a wide-ranging book that deals with many aspect of the American West in general and the desert areas in particular. Schultheis is a gifted writer, and has a knack not only for telling a good tale but also for turning a wonderful line. He is highly attuned to the remarkable and the humorous in almost every situation, and the book is a marvelous blend of the unexpected, the reflective, and the funny.

My favorite moment might be an occasion he recounts of visiting a store in Navajo territory. While in the store, an elderly Navajo stumbles up to him and says, apropos of nothing, "Hey, I hear that Elvis died," in a tone that almost suggests the Schultheis and The King were lifelong pals. After replying, that yes, Elvis had died and that he had evidently been pretty sick, the Navajo, ignoring what Schultheis had said, continues, "Yeah, Elvis and Hitler, two of your greatest leaders, dead." (I am quoting this story from memory, so don't call me to task for specific inaccuracies.)

This is a book filled with many wonderful and marvelous moments. I would heartily urge anyone with an interest in literature about the American West or the desert to read it as soon as possible.

A cousin tipped me off to this little known masterpiece, which consists of a short, well-written series of anecdotes and tales about the West. An expert in verbal imagery, Schultheis takes you gambling at Native American pow-wow, canyon ratting in Utah, meeting a jack rabbit who lures motorcyclists to their doom, and other esoteric topics with equal aplomb.

His best tale, and the one you won't forget, is the last in order, a fictional episode during the next great Western drought, when the xerothermic climate brings disaster west of the Mississippi.

Schultheis is very readable, and each essay is thought-provoking. I predict you will enjoy this wonderful book. As the previous reviewer cautions, however, loan it out at your own risk.

Rob's imagery and cutting edge mind put him up there with the best - I like him better than the proverbial Ed Abbey (Rob's a little more cerebral). I'm an avid reader of anything to do with the desert Southwest (and West), as well as a desert rat myself, and I was hard put to find anything I'd read to date that was this good. You won't be disappointed with this book - buy an extra for your friends, because they'll "borrow" it and never return it (I've now bought 3 of them and can't find my latest copy...hmmm, now that I think of it, I suspect it went to Hawaii with a friend...)