Joshua Tree: Desolation Tango (Desert Places) (Paperback)

by Deanne Stillman (Author), Galen Hunt (Photographer)

Editorial Reviews

Review
As Stillman and Hunt show, Joshua Tree can be unsettling, provocative, and ultimately gratifying. -- Tom Miller, award-winning author of On the Border: Portraits of America's Southwestern Frontier

Deanne Stillman's text is beautiful, understated and precise. Galen Hunt's photographs are truly artful. -- Percival Everett, author of Wounded

Deanne reveals a deep empathy for the bizarre beauty of this rocky and spiny wonderland. Her snappy commentary is embellished with magnificent photographs by Galen Hunt. -- Kenneth Anger, author of Hollywood Babylon

Product Description
In a subtle dance of arid solitude, two southern California deserts come together at Joshua Tree National Park. One is the Colorado Desert—an extension of the Sonoran Desert—and features natural gardens of ocotillo and cholla cactus. Moving west, the other end of the park engages the Mojave Desert, the special habitat of the Joshua tree as well as some of the most interesting geologic displays found anywhere. After the area became a national monument in 1936, local and regional residents were the primary visitors. As Southern California grew so did park visitation; Joshua Tree now lies within a three-hour drive of more than 18 million people. Elevated from national monument to national park status in 1994, Joshua tree now sees greater numbers of visitors than ever from around the nation and the world. For Deanne Stillman, Joshua Tree is a place of pilgrimage. Her own desert mecca, the park speaks to her in ways that no other place does. With crisp and impassioned narrative she takes the reader through the park’s wonders, including a talking cactus, mysterious petroglyphs, and rocks in the shape of the late New York Yankees manager Billy Martin. Stunning photographs by Galen Hunt further accentuate the gorgeous landscape, highlighting the growing need to preserve its beauty. While it explores the park’s history, geology, flora, and fauna, Joshua Tree also is a plea to walk lightly on the land, to conserve our natural heritage, and to appreciate places that call out to the soul.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: University of Arizona Press (September 15, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0816523509
• ISBN-13: 978-0816523504
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 8.3 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #410,295 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Visions, Visionaries, and Nixon, November 5, 2006

By	John Angello (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

When I got this book I spent the first week enjoying the photographs. I'm glad I devoted some undivided attention for these images. They express a personal involvement with, and a command of the subject matter. They would make a wonderful, gallery show. I was not in a hurry to get to the text, though, probably because I thought I already got the gist of the book from the excerpt in "My California" (Angel City Press), or that it was going to be a bit of a travel log.

What was I thinking!?! I clearly forgot who I was dealing with. This is the author that cracked wide open my emotions with her story of the heroic power of a young woman in the same desert ("Twentynine Palms").

Besides the blind side assault on my status quo, this volume, as most of what Ms. Stillman writes, performs well on several levels. Geology, botany, zoology, humor, history, and politics are woven together with autobiographical anthropology. And, despite the nonfiction genre, the book subtly tracks the opening, conflict, climax, and resolution of a play or novel.

Much of my enjoyment in reading her work is my perception of the recurring theme of putting Pop-Culture, Americana, and civilization in context. A kind of Grand Unification Theory. All political debate prompted by the biting, well supported commentary seems welcome in this Big Picture. And, Baseball is more than just a metaphor.

This book does satisfy the nature enthusiast's desire for the must see, and might see highlights of the Park, but moreover, it's well crafted, moving, and much larger than it's size suggests.