The Secret Knowledge of Water : Discovering the Essence of the American Desert
Where to buy The Secret Knowledge of Water : Learning the Essence of the American Desert books online?
- ISBN13: 9780316610698
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
Product Description
Like the highest mountain peaks, deserts are environments that can be inhospitable even to the most seasoned explorers. As Craig Childs makes clear in this highly praised book, there are two simple ways to die in the desert: thirst or drowning. His extraordinary treks through arid lands in search of water – mysterious solitary water holes, a network of streams that flow only at night, a gushing fountain that hides a hidden lake, serene and otherworldy – are an astonshing revelation of the natural world at its most extreme.Amazon.com Review
The “essence of the American desert,” as the subtitle of Craig Childs’s book has it, is water. A desert, by definition, lacks it, but when water does come, it comes in hammering, sometimes devastating plenty. Childs, a thirtysomething desert rat with a vast knowledge of the Southwest’s remote corners, knows this fact well. “Most rain falling anywhere but the desert comes slow enough that it is swallowed by the soil lacking comment,” he observes. “Desert rains, powerful and sporadic, tend to hit the ground, gather into floods, and are gone before the water can sink five inches into the ground.”
The travels that Childs recounts in this plain narrative take him from places sometimes parched, sometimes swimming, from the depths of the Grand Gap to the dry limestone tanks of the lava-strewn Sonoran Desert. As he travels, Childs gives a close reading of the desert landscape (“the moral,” he writes at one point, “is that if you know the land and its maps, you might live”), observing the rocks, plants, animals, and people that call it home. Some of his adventures will remind readers of Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire–save that Childs writes lacking Abbey’s bluster, and with a measured lyricism that well suits the achingly lovely back canyons and cactus forests of the Southwest. By turns travelogue, ecological treatise, and meditative essay, Childs’s book will speak to anyone who has spent time under desert skies, wondering when the next drop of rain might fall. –Gregory McNamee
Buy Cheap The Secret Knowledge of Water : Learning the Essence of the American Desert Online
Related posts:
- Wild at Heart Audio: Discovering The Secret of A Man’s Soul
- The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power
- The Secret History of the American Empire: The Truth About Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and How to Change the World
- Lost Knowledge of the Ancients
- A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge:
I was excited to read this book based on the reviews. I was expecting a hiking adventure and narrative about people affected by water. What I read was confused and disconnected. It was the two styles I mentioned plus detailed scientific analysis of flowers and geology. Most of it was in the Grand Gap area but it also dealt with parts of New Mexico and southern Arizona. I would not recommend this book.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
I perhaps shouldn’t be writing a review for a book of which I read only 15 pages, but I don’t reflect the sample of reviews should be skewed toward people who could stomach more of the writing than I could, either. The book place me in mind of George Orwell’s essay “Politics and the English Language”, which isn’t exactly on point, but is fundamentally about writers whose writing gets in the way of communication and even thought. There seem to be some appealing tales in this book hidden behind what veers from prose to the edge of terrible poetry; it didn’t seem to me to be worth it.
Your mileage may vary; if it’s convenient to look at a sample of the writing, perhaps you will like the style better than I did. I would warn you about thinking you’re buying something readable, though, just because the topic interests you.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
This was a very appealing book about water in the desert. We read it for book club and it made for a very appealing discussion.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
Childs’ book remains one of the very best works of scenery writing about desert landscapes and their effects upon a sensitive and adventurous explorer. There are few works were the reader so conceptually understands and emotionally feels the value of water. I’ve recommended this book to many over the years when giving lectures across the country about water management and water ethics. And I quote Childs’ book 6 times in my own recently published Deep Interest: The Experience of Water (nominated for top environmental book of the year, 2003. The leader’s message about staying wet even in deserts is a fantastic one. For as master hydrophile Thoreau wrote ” That part of you that is wettest is fullest of life” (Quoted from Profitably Soaked: Thoreau’s Engagment With Water, Green Frigate Books, 2003).
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
This is an incredibly excellent book – extremely well written, very powerful,reminiscent of Edward Abbey, and, I must admit, better than my own desert travel journal, Desert Dancing: Exploring the Land, the People, the Legends of the California Deserts (Hunter Travel Guides). I’m jealous but respectful. Mr. Childs earned his knowledge the best way, by being there, and he takes us along on these wonderful excursions, doing things I never would, going places I never could. With such brilliant and powerful writing I am there with him, wading the streams, following the floods, climbing the rocks and dodging the snakes.
This one is a keeper – right there on the shelf with my Edward Abby books.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5