Desert America : Boom and Bust in the (New) New West

A brilliantly illuminating portrait of the twenty-first-century Westa book as vast, diverse, and unexpected as the land and people, from one of our foremost chroniclers of migration The economic boomand the devastation left in its wakehas been writ nowhere as large as on the West, the most iconic of American landscapes. Over the last decade the West has undergone a political and demographic upheaval comparable only to the opening of the frontier. Now, in a work of powerful reportage and memoir, Ruben Martinez, acclaimed author of Crossing Over, evokes a new world of extremes: outrageous wealth and devastating poverty, sublime beauty and ecological ruin. In northern New Mexico, an epidemic of drug addiction flourishes in the shadow of some of the country's richest zip codes; in Joshua Tree, California, gentrification displaces people and history. In Marfa, Texas, an exclusive enclave triggers a race war near the banks of the Rio Grande. And on the Tohono O'odham reservation, Native Americans hunt down Mexican migrants crossing the most desolate stretch of the border. With each desert story, Martinez explores his own encounter with the West and his love for this most contested region. In the process, he reveals that the great frontier is now a harbinger of the vast disparities that are redefining the very idea of America.Martínez, Rubén is the author of 'Desert America : Boom and Bust in the (New) New West', published 2012 under ISBN 9780805079777 and ISBN 0805079777.