Sonoran Desert [Paperback]

Charles Bowden (Author), Jack W. Dykinga (Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 1997

The Sonoran Desert of the southwestern United States and northern Mexico is one of the most fascinating and starkly beautiful places in North America. In this large-format book, a widely published nature writer and a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer capture this unique terrain of dramatic contrasts and breathtaking horizons in words and images. 125 color photos.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The vast Sonoran Desert, which stretches from southern Arizona and southeastern California far into Mexico, offers mysteries aplenty to uninitiated travelers and longtime desert rats alike. Pulitzer prize-winning photographer Jack Dykinga has been wandering its lonelier stretches for years, and the images he conjures up in The Sonoran Desert make for a rare and bounteous feast. He has a special fondness for cactus and boojum studded horizons, withered landscapes at high noon, and the arid shores of the Sea of Cortez, and no one has captured the essence of the place quite so well. The text by Charles Bowden, himself a noted desert traveler, is an added attraction to a first-rate collection of photographs.

Product Details

• Paperback: 167 pages
• Publisher: Harry N Abrams (February 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810926695
• ISBN-13: 978-0810926691
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,126,474 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #37 in Books > Science & Math > Nature & Ecology > Ecosystems > Deserts

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Beauty is in the light", March 31, 2000

By 

Paul Schilliger - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sonoran Desert (Paperback)

If you think of the deserts as places of emptiness and boredom, have a look at this superb book! The subject was not easy but Jack Dykinga is mastering the art of using the light and the shapes to make us enter a new dimension. His breathtaking large format photographs plead in favor of preserving the wilderness in it's original state and presents us to it's amazing vegetal hosts. After seeing this book, you will never ever think of the Sonoran Desert as an "uninhabited place".

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The beauty of the desert captured in stunning photographs, August 1, 2003

By 

Ronald Scheer "rockysquirrel" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sonoran Desert (Paperback)

This is a stunning book of photography, with about 120 color plates of the Sonoran desert, taken by photographer Jack W. Dykinga. Besides Arizona, locations include Mexico, Baja California, the shoreline of the Sea of Cortez, and Anza-Borrego and Joshua Tree National Monument in southern California.

There's no mistaking that it's a dry, hot region, but it's also clear that there is plant life almost everywhere. There are photographs of landscapes of sand, rock and sky, with saguaro, barrel cactus, ocotillo, and many desert flowers. There is not a sign of human life (until you reach the last half dozen pages where the editor has included several shots of blight: graffiti, a junkyard, a concrete water channel). Many photos are taken at sunrise or sundown, capturing glowing colors and shadows. A few are taken after snowfall.

The text, by Charles Bowden, is personal and impressionistic, with a Sierra Club point of view. He emphasizes the desert's resistance to any but the Native populations, who lived here in harmony with the landscape for millennia before the exploitation of European explorers. To these, in their crudest manifestations, are compared the more reckless schemes of modern-day developers. The closing chapter is an appreciation of wilderness advocate Edward Abbey. In my opinion, an error on the part of the book designer was to set these long essays as full pages of italic type, which makes them difficult to read.

As a companion volume, I recommend Joseph Wood Krutch's "Desert Year," an account of a year spent in the Sonoran desert near Tucson. Although a different desert, there's also Abbey's "Desert Solitaire."

5.0 out of 5 stars The Sonoran Desert by Charles Bowden, July 6, 2005

By 

N. Williams (Winston-Salem, NC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Sonoran Desert (Hardcover)

This book is one to have in your collection. The images by
photographer "Jack Dykinga," are done with an artistic approach
to landscapes. Very nice layout,text and paper quality. I bought
the hardcopy used in excellent condition. Much to my surprise it
was signed by the author, "Charles Bowden," as an added bonus.