Legends of the American Desert

by Alex Shoumatoff

• ISBN13: 9780394569154
• ISBN10: 0394569156
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2013-07-17
• Publisher: Random House Digital Inc.

Summary

For his brilliant reportage ranging from the forested recesses of the Amazon to the manicured lawns of Westchester County, New York, Alex Shoumatoff has won acclaim as one of our most perceptive guides to the oddest corners of the earth. Now, with this book, he takes us on a kaleidoscopic journey into the most complex and myth-laden region of the American landscape and imagination. In this amazing narrative, Shoumatoff records his quest to capture the vast multiplicity of the American Southwest. Beginning with his first trip after college across the desert in a station wagon, some twenty-five years ago, he surveys the boundless variety of people and experiences constituting the place--the idea--that has become America's symbol and last redoubt of the "Other. From the Biosphere to the Mormons, from the deadly world of narcotraffickers to the secret lives of the covertly Jewish conversos, Shoumatoff explores the many alternative states of being who have staked their claim in the Southwest, making it a haven for every brand of refugee, fugitive, and utopian. And as he ventures across time and space, blending many genres--history, anthropology, natural science, to name only a few--he brings us a wealth of information on chile addiction, the diffusion of horses, the formation of the deserts and mountain ranges, the struggles of the Navajo to preserve their culture, and countless other aspects of this place we think we know. Full of profound sympathy and unique insights, Legends of the American Desert is a superbly rich epic of fact and reflection destined to take its place among such classics of regional portraiture as Ian Frazier's Great Plains. Alex Shoumatoff has created an exuberant celebration of a singularly American reality.

Author Biography

Alex Shoumatoff was born in Mt. Kisco, New York, in 1946. Formerly a staff writer for The New Yorker and now a contributing editor of Vanity Fair, he has been hailed for his profiles of personalities from Chico Mendes to Dian Fossey, and for his reporting from the farthest-flung reaches of the world, from Africa to Tibet. He is the author of nine previous books. He lives in upstate New York with his wife and four sons.

Table of Contents

PART ONE	3	(116)
The Absence of Water	3	(10)
A Gallery of Fugitives	13	(14)
Ruins	27	(17)
Enter Man	44	(11)
Adaptations	55	(17)
Hooked on Chile	72	(4)
Getting to Know Some Navajo	76	(19)
Big Mountain	95	(7)
The Captivity of Clayton Lonetree	102	(17)
PART TWO	119	(160)
Land Ho	119	(2)
The Duke Comes to Duke City	121	(7)
The Conquest	128	(2)
An Incredible Odyssey	130	(3)
Hallucinations of the North	133	(17)
The Cibola Expedition	150	(12)
The Spiritual Conquista	162	(7)
The New Treasure of the Sierra Madre	169	(21)
A Friend of the Indians	190	(20)
Spreading the Word	210	(2)
The North Beckons Again	212	(10)
The Diffusion of Horses	222	(2)
The Crypto-Jews	224	(7)
Seventeenth-Century New Mexico	231	(6)
Revolt	237	(5)
The Border Frontera	242	(9)
The Water Rights of La Raza	251	(4)
The Two Charlies	255	(8)
El Tigre	263	(10)
The End of the Road	273	(6)
PART THREE	279	(209)
A Changing of the Guard	279	(6)
Changing Notions of the Frontier	285	(4)
Crossings	289	(6)
Route 66	295	(4)
The Wizard of Amarillo	299	(4)
Among the Cowboys	303	(17)
Tombstone	320	(11)
Desert Utopias	331	(22)
Oases	353	(11)
Watering the Oases	364	(9)
Albuquerque: Our Oasis for a While	373	(12)
Fantase	385	(6)
The Imaging of the Southwest	391	(13)
Four Tucsons	404	(6)
A Soul Reading in Phoenix	410	(8)
The Walk-Ins of Sedona	418	(5)
The Puzzling Death of Leroy Jackson	423	(32)
New Orders for the Mesa of Doom	455	(28)
A Look Behind the Curtain	483	(5)
Epilogue: I Bring My Shadow to Big Mountain	488	(15)
Selected Bibliography	503	(10)
Acknowledgments	513	(4)
Index	517