"Edward Abbey's 1975 cult classic 'The Monkey Wrench Gang,' which details the often bumbling attempts of a ragtag crew of eco warriors to stop construction of a dam."

Where actual plot is, of course, the "often bumbling attempts of a ragtag crew of eco warriors" to BLOW UP the Glen Canyon Dam (A project regretted even by Barry Goldwater himself) at its opening ceremony. I suspect that either Mr. Amidon has little familiarity with this book, or that he merely decided the actual plot was too vivid for our era's pc sensitivities--because god forbid that terrorism ever be cast as funny.

Well, the entrance to the Monument Valley park is in Utah. Perhaps as your drive through the park, you cross into Arizona. It is true that its within the Navajo Reservation. Also, the park is managed by the Dine government, not the National Park Serice. This gets into the tricky issue of jurisdiction of reservations and states over land and location. In any case, state boundary lines within the reservation are not irrelevant.

However, I don't really think it matters. (One characteristic that seems to define the Southwest is the multiple overlapping histories and boundaries that exist everywhere.) The point of my letter wasn't really to criticize the author. The article was well written and thoughtful. I was mainly commenting on Cadillac Desert and how I thought that it will change your view of west forever. rhenley commented that the author seems to ignore the issue of water and man's influence on the desert. However, Cadillac Desert is a book that does exactly that.

The issue of native voices (also mentioned by rhenley) is obviously important. However, finding non-fiction literature that was actually written by Hopi and/or Navajo authors about their land and culture is very difficult. (Hopi, in particular, are rather secretive about the these issues.) Most of that literature was written by non-natives who have spent time living near or with these peoples. The Hillerman books, which were mentioned by the author, do address the issues of culture. Hillerman is a great friend of the Dine and as far as I know, the cultural material within his stories is generally correct.

I love the Literary Guide to the World feature but I cannot let a small comment stand without correction. Stephen Amidon repeats a tired but popular misconception that after abandoning their famous cliff dwellings, the Anasazi simply disappeared without a trace. Though I haven't read David Robert's book (though now I plan to) it seems unlikely that he would perpetuate that myth, especially since he used Hopi guides.

All one need do to discover the fate of the Anasazi is to learn the preferred term for them—The Ancestral Puebloans. Granted, even that name is not without controversy (the Navajo Nation Preservation Department opposes it), but it certainly tells the story succinctly. The majority of material evidence and oral history suggest that for a variety of reasons, the cliff dwellers left the Colorado Plateau in the 12th and 13th centuries and headed South to merge with Pueblo peoples.

Since Arizona also contains the Hopi's among many other native populations, I find at least some mention of their unique native voice rather disturbing when I peruse this book list.

As noted, the issue is popularly contemporary as to how modern people have failed to understand the landscape that holds them now in these places we have manufactured for our lives.

It should only take one visit to Phoenix tap water to understand that not only is the water being improperly mined, but deadened with chemicals at the same time. So quickly then the relationship of water in the modern desert is directly, intimately presented to us as out of balance.

Where can we then turn for the understanding we need to beat a path out of the manufactured desert into that real one ?

The contemporary failure to understand one's landscape is more rooted in the loss of the ancient language and images associated with inhabited space than we would like to acknowledge.

By dropping out whole sections of the native voice of the landscape from this list you only entice us down a meandering trail that dissipates much too soon.

While there are other books that don't so readily come to my mind with a non-bioregional Arizona centric focus, and are long missing from my bookshelf, or are quite unavailable; I would at least think that the books of Frank Waters: The Book of the Hopi, Masked Gods, etc. should have rated some mention here.

For fans of magical realism, don't miss Alfredo Vea Jr.'s La Maravilla, set in the desert outskirts of Phoenix, and Terri Windling's The Wood Wife, set in the Rincon Mountains near Tucson. Both these novels evoke the desert beautifully, and are too often overlooked.

For nonfiction, I agree with other letter writers here that Charles Bowden's work is

Arizona has one of the largest populations of Native American Nations and writers in the country-- second only to New Mexico. It would have been nice to see some of them mentioned.

As another letter writer mentioned here it is a shock here when someone is actually from this state. Not only am I from here my descendents homesteaded here, so I'm around a 3rd generation Arizona native. People moving here have a barely disguised contempt for this land and the people in it. I live in the Phoenix area and all I hear is how much everyone hates it and it's not like back home (i.e Chicago, New York, whatever). The article and the books mentioned are correct about how developers and others try to create a slice of the mid-west in the middle of the desert which not only wastes water but in the long term probably cannot be maintained. And there is also no need for it. In the southern part of the state it is what is considered lush desert, plenty of plants and grass grow here naturally but it is usually ripped up and replaced with non native plants. I apologize for rambling but it is a great concern to me because I do love it here and I see so many people moving in, abusing it, resenting it, and then after they’ve trashed it returning in disgust to their home states. The whole Phoenix area is treated like everything is disposable. Oh well, maybe I’ll move further out into the desert and become a grumpy miser. It does run in the family.