Desert America A Journey Through Our Most Divided Landscape [Paperback]

Desert America is an uninsulated wire running through the hard-bitten, right-now, rough-edged Southwest, a land still being born. Go ahead and grab hold: first comes shockmaybe of recognition, maybe alarmthen you keep buzzing for page after electric page. You can't let go. William deBuys, author ofA Great AridnessandRiver of Traps

The economic boomand the devastation left in its wakewas writ nowhere as large as on the American West. Over the past decade, the most iconic of American landscapes has undergone a political and demographic upheaval comparable only to the opening of the frontier. InDesert America, a work of powerful reportage and memoir, acclaimed author Rub?n Mart?nez explores a world of extremes: drug addiction flourishing in the shadow of some of America's richest zip codes, an exclusive Texas enclave that coexists with bloodshed on the banks of the Rio Grande, and Native Americans hunting down Mexican migrants crossing the most desolate stretch of the border.

Desert Americadetails Martinez's own love for this most contested region and reveals that the great frontier is now in the forefront of the vast disparities that are redefining the very idea of America.

It's hard to imagine a more engaging and illuminating chronicle of the contemporary West....A nuanced, conflicted, poetic meditation on an endlessly elusive subject. San Francisco Chronicle

Deeply moving and insightful...A memoir that also manages to be an excellent work of reportage& Mart?nez treats all the people he writes about, and the places where they live, with the kind of profound respect all too rare among the legions of Western writers who have preceded him. The result is an emotional and intellectually astute portrait of communities long neglected and misunderstood by American literature. Los Angeles Times

A compelling and daring book, one filled with equal parts confession, history, anlS*