Gathering the Desert (Paperback)

~ Gary Paul Nabhan (Author), Paul Mirocha (Illustrator)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Nabhan, a naturalist specializing in arid lands, seeks in this book to popularize his field. He believes a better informed general public would prevent abuse to long-standing desert ecology. With a judicious mixture of ethnobotany, folklore, history, sociology, and nutrition he creates a "persona" for 12 Sonoran Desert plants: the creosote bush, palm, mescal, sandfood, organpipe cactus, amaranth, tepary bean, chile, devil's claw, panicgrass, and wild gourds. The result is a series of essays that are very readable and enlightening while remaining more scholarly than popular. Recommended for large public libraries as well as academic and special collections. Sondra Brunhumer, Western Michigan Univ. Libs., Kalamazoo
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Description

To the untrained eye, a desert is a wasteland that defies civilization; yet the desert has been home to native cultures for centuries and offers sustenance in its surprisingly wide range of plant life. Gary Paul Nabhan has combed the desert in search of plants forgotten by all but a handful of American Indians and Mexican Americans. In Gathering the Desert readers will discover that the bounty of the desert is much more than meets the eye—whether found in the luscious fruit of the stately organpipe cactus or in the lowly tepary bean. Nabhan has chosen a dozen of the more than 425 edible wild species found in the Sonoran Desert to demonstrate just how bountiful the land can be. From the red-hot chiltepines of Mexico to the palms of Palm Springs, each plant exemplifies a symbolic or ecological relationship which people of this region have had with plants through history. Each chapter focuses on a particular plant and is accompanied by an original drawing by artist Paul Mirocha. Word and picture together create a total impression of plants and people as the book traces the turn of seasons in the desert.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 209 pages
• Publisher: University of Arizona Press; Later printing edition (August 1, 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0816510148
• ISBN-13: 978-0816510146
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.4 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #441,598 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The author is not just an Ethnobotanist, he's a Poet!, September 14, 2002

By	John R. Foulks (Pueblo West, CO United States) - See all my reviews

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.

4.0 out of 5 stars Desert Bsh Tucker, June 19, 2008

By	Paul Garland (El Paso, Texas USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This is a pretty good book, well worth buying. It is especially geared to the Sonoran desert but has a couple of plants that are in the Chihuahuan desert also.