Originally appearing at: Booklist

The untenable water situation in the Southwest has been the subject of several notable titles (Cadillac Desert, 1986; Running Dry, 2010). Now deBuys takes a broad approach in a manner that affirms his standing beside John McPhee and Wallace Stegner. While he focuses on the environmental science of heat and aridity, he also acknowledges the uncertain nature of climate variability itself. As deBuys wanders from Las Vegas to Mesa Verde to the Glen Canyon Dam, he gives the past and present their due as he maps our way to a drier future. As he walks the Mexican/American border, ground zero for the immigration debate, he addresses both countries' undeniable dependence on the Colorado River. At a mountaintop observatory in Arizona, he faces head-on the complicated biopolitics concerning land that is home to an endangered squirrel, crucial to university astronomers, and held sacred by a local tribe. With wide-eyed wonder and the clearest of prose, deBuys explains why we should care about these places, the people he portrays, and the conundrums over land and water he illuminates. No longer are aridity and climate change in the Southwest only of regional interest; deBuys is writing for America and we should all listen to what he has to say.

Starred review - October 15, 2011