The Sagebrush Ocean: A Natural History of the Great Basin (Max C. Fleischmann Series in Great Basin Natural History)

EAN/UPC/ISBN Code 9780874172225


The Great Basin desert is so little explored, so little inhabited, that an Australian journalist--and he a seasoned denizen of the Great Outback--could deem one of the region"s main roadways, U.S. 50, to be "the loneliest highway in America." The vast arid expanse, comprising portions of Utah, Nevada, Oregon, California, and Idaho, has never enjoyed the cachet of the Sonoran Desert, chronicled by writers like Ed Abbey and Joseph Wood Krutch. It finds a gifted champion in Stephen Trimble, who recounts the complex and varied natural history of the Basin"s ecosystems in a mere 250 oversized pages. He takes us from salt playas to mountain islands, from creosote bush valleys to aspen glens. It"s a fine tour, enjoyable from first to last page, and exquisitely well illustrated.