THE DESERT READER, edited by Peter...

THE DESERT READER, edited by Peter Wild (University of Utah Press: $17.95, illustrated). Wild’s anthology traces the shifts in American attitudes toward the Southwestern desert that encompasses much of Utah, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Southern California, from the 16th Century to the present. Throughout the 19th Century, the region generally was regarded as so much waste real estate to be discarded or foisted onto suckers. In 1859, Horace Greeley wrote: “If Uncle Sam should ever sell that tract for one cent per acre, he will swindle the purchaser outrageously.” Not until the 20th Century did Americans and Europeans begin to see the desert as a beautiful and even worshipful place. Nearly a century after Greeley published his caustic evaluation, Aldo Leopold lamented that a hunter who shot an Arizona grizzly bear “topped the spire off an edifice a-building since the morning stars sang together.” Regrettably, Wild seems far less flexible than the writers he’s anthologized: Although he states “this is not a book about conservation,” he uses the introduction to each selection to rail against development, road building, farming, pollution, etc. The 19th-Century steel cuts of desert scenes offer a pleasant counterpoint to the text, but a good map would be more useful.