Southern Arizona Nature Almanac

A guide to the area's natural resources covers plants, wildlife, and constellations, along with information about places to visit and the weather.

"A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert provides the most complete collection of Sonoran Desert natural history information ever compiled and is a perfect introduction to this biologically rich desert of North America."--BOOK JACKET.

This book provides everything you'll ever need in a guide book. It is an inspiring background read, an invaluable on-the-spot companion and a superb souvenir of your visit. Evocative photography: Insight Guides are renowned for their great pictures, which vividly convey a sense of everyday life. Illuminating text: Expert writers bring to life Arizona's history, culture, parks, arts, food and, above all, its people. Incisive evaluations: From the overwhelming beauty of the Grand Canyon and Indian Country to the bustle of Phoenix and Tucson, it's all here. Detailed, cross-referenced maps: All sites are clearly highlighted and numbered in relation to the text. Full listings: All the travel details, hotels, restaurants and phone numbers you'll need.

Arizona is known for its exceptional variety of topography and ecosystems. From stands of saguaro cacti and plunging canyons to high alpine forests, many are fragile areas in need of protection. All told, Arizona has some 92 wilderness areas, and author Tom Dollar provides informative descriptions for backcountry travelers wishing to explore those 65 areas accessible to the public. (Many areas are so remote they are virtually inaccessible.) This guidebook includes suggestions for hikers, along with insights into the unique natural history of such areas as Paria Canyon, Mazatzal, Organ Pipe, and Kachina Peaks wildernesses. Outdoor photographer Jerry Sieve's dramatic photographs illustrate each of the areas described.

In this essay collection, the sequel to his A Place to Read, Michael Cohen presents the odd idea of the suicide note as a writing project that can be critiqued like any other, describes encounters with illegal border crossers in south Texas, and ponders the sudden popularity of books about atheism. Books are a frequent subject here, and Cohen makes an argument for The Maltese Falcon as the Great American Novel, searches for the perfect, the Platonic, nature handbook, and compares playing golf to reading about it. Reading is, for him, as engrossing a form of experience as any other—say hitchhiking through the Southwest with an old friend, the joys of flying small planes, or the charm of studying ancient Greek while people-watching at the gym, all experiences chronicled here. He looks back at the effect a 1956 collision of two airliners over the Grand Canyon had on him as a kid fond of flying, and how he learned about the joys of good food during a wanderjahr in Europe. Many of these essays begin with a question: whether Americans deserve their reputation for materialism, why we seem to have lost the climate change battle, and whether talking to yourself might really be beneficial. Another frequent topic is how our ideal places cannot avoid being bruised by time. He looks at what happened as the Tucson bars of his college days closed or morphed into very different places. He traces seasonal changes in the desert. He notes what happens to its effect when a giant cross beside I-40 in Texas is joined by equally giant windmills. And he takes a mind’s-eye tour through Paris’s terrace cafés and their literary associations after the 2015 terrorist attack there.

"The landscape of the Sonoran Desert Region varies dramatically from parched desert lowlands to semiarid tropical forests and frigid subalpine meadows... "A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert" takes readers deep into its vast expanse, looking closely at the relationships of plants and animals with the land and people, through time and across landscapes"--

This rich, enthusiastic guide to the Tucson, Rincon, Santa Catalina, and Santa Rita Mountains has been completely revised. Betty Leavengood’s fourth edition of her bestselling Tucson Hiking Guide offers new routes and updated access information, detailed maps, and clear descriptions to area trailheads. This latest edition includes thirty-seven hikes rated easy to difficult by mountain range; revised information on precautions for desert hiking; historical notes, photographs, and anecdotes; and detailed maps and descriptions with elevation/distance.

Desert cottontail // Sylvilagus audubonii - Simmons B. Buntin