Rich, varied, and deeply engaged, this volume does urgent and exciting work, illuminating the desert West’s cultural and ecological complexity, revealing the environmental costs of its colonization and settlement, and offering creative strategies for promoting environmental awareness. An essential contribution to the fields of Western American and ecocritical literary studies.

Audrey Goodman, Georgia State University

‘Reading aridity,’ in this impressive volume, means reading desert-related texts to improve our understanding and appreciation of the cultural and ecological dimensions of the dry regions of the American West, demonstrating how careful attention to desert texts and desert ecologies brings this pulsating life into meaningful focus.

Scott Slovic, University of Idaho, editor of Getting Over the Color Green

This timely and important book grabs us by the shoulders and turns our faces toward aridity and toward desert landscapes in the American West that are ancient, richly diverse ecosystems. Sharply written and beautifully edited, this book is a haunting, illuminating look at how we live with and write about landscapes that are the opposite of the color green.

Sara Spurgeon, Texas Tech University

Reading Aridity in Western American Literature offers multiple new ways of thinking about deserts and our responsibilities to them. And this fine, well-written collection is a pleasure for anyone to read.

Melody Graulich, Utah State University

Ach and Reger's work is well written and thought provoking, with strong theoretical support. The multifaceted desert captures the imagination and follows everyone throughout their lives, "remind[ing] us continually of our human-ness even while inviting us to be a part of a larger-than-human world" (275). The fact that scholars and writers alike have so much to say about a sup­posedly empty and barren landscape counteracts stereotypes, thus making deserts and their interrelated elements one of the most fruitful avenues of exploration, now and in the future.

Western American Literature