Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Gathering the Desert. by Gary Paul Nabhan ISBN: 0-8165-1014-8 Publisher: University of Arizona Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 1987 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)
Rating: 5
Summary: The author is not just an Ethnobotanist, he's a Poet!
Comment: Quite simply, read this book. It turns the subject of "ethnoecology" (sounds dull, doesn't it?!) into a poetic duet of plants and the relationship native peoples developed with them. Nabhan, in this book, profiles several individual species (found in his beloved Sonoran desert) as intimately as a biographer would profile an admired personage. The illustrations are delicate and so accurate you could go out and identify each species at first sight. I became enchanted, and wistful, at Nabhan's accounts of ingenious interactions of Southwest Amerinds and useful plants that allowed both to survive and thrive in such a harsh region. Wistful, because many of these vital prehistoric resources, such as panic grass and sandfood, are unknown to modern peoples, and virtually extinct. And with them, human ability to survive such harsh landscapes without radically modifying them is going extinct as well.
From Nabhan's perspective (in all his books), native peoples of a region are not interlopers, but another component of a balanced local ecology; the ecological diversity & resource potentials lost when the First World imposes foreign ecologies on regions is a subtext of all Nabhan's writings.
Each chapter of "Gathering the Desert" stands by itself; but together they lead to a conclusion of incomparable adaptation to what Euro-Americans see as a cactus "wasteland". I assign readings from this book, and the entire book, to my college classes in Southwest Indians and ecological anthropology. However, it has much wider appeal, and to call it "highly readable" is an understatement. I respect Nabhan's careful academic research and his commitment to actually going into the field to experience the peoples and the natural environment directly. I admire even more his ability to make what is very commonly a dull reporting of "what people ate" into a literary symphony. All his books are excellent; this is the best of the best.
 |
Title: The Desert Smells Like Rain: A Naturalist in O'Odham Country by Gary Paul Nabhan ISBN: 0816522499 Publisher: University of Arizona Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
 |
Title: Plants, People, and Culture: The Science of Ethnobotany (Scientific American Library Paperback) by Michael J. Balick, Paul Alan Cox ISBN: 0716760274 Publisher: W.H. Freeman & Company Pub. Date: 01 September, 1997 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
 |
Title: Storyteller by Leslie M. Silko ISBN: 155970005X Publisher: General Pub. Date: 28 April, 1989 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
 |
Title: Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods by Gary Paul Nabhan ISBN: 0393020177 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: November, 2001 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
 |
Title: Cities of Gold: A Journey Across the American Southwest by Douglas J. Preston ISBN: 0826320864 Publisher: University of New Mexico Press Pub. Date: 01 March, 1999 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
