On the Edge: Water, Immigration, and Politics in the Southwest
(Paperback)
Publishing Details
On the Edge: Water, Immigration, and Politics in the Southwest
By (Author) Char Miller
Trinity University Press,U.S.
Trinity University Press,U.S.
26th February 2013
United States
Classifications
General
Non Fiction
577.0979
Physical Properties
Paperback
272
Width 127mm, Height 203mm
283g
Description
On the Edge grew out of a lifetime spent living and traveling across the American Southwest, from San Antonio to Los Angeles. Char Miller examines this borderland region through a native's eyes and contemplates its considerable conflicts. Internal to the various US states and Mexico's northern tier, there are struggles over water, debates over undocumented immigrants, the criminalizing of the border, and the region's evolution into a no-man's land.
The book investigates how we live on this contested land --how we make our place in its oft-arid terrain; an ecosystem that burns easily and floods often and defies our efforts to nestle in its foothills, canyons, and washes.
Exploring the challenges in the Southwest of learning how to live within this complex natural system while grasping its historical and environmental frameworks. Understanding these framing devices is critical to reaching the political accommodations necessary to build a more generous society, a more habitable landscape, and a more just community, whatever our documented status or species.
Reviews
"One of the environmental history profession's most thoughtful and astute observers (not to mention most graceful writers) shares with us his accumulated wisdom about the pasts and presents of places her has come to know deeply...Wise, witty, and intriguing."-Environmental History
Author Bio
Char Miller, who grew up in Darien, CT, received his BA from Pitzer College, and his MA and Ph.D. from The Johns Hopkins University. For 26 wonderful years, he taught U. S. history and urban studies at Trinity University in San Antonio. Now he directs the Environmental Analysis Program at Pomona College (Claremont CA), where he is the W. M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis. Miller has served as a Contributing Writer for the Texas Observer, and as Associate Editor of Environmental History and the Journal of Forestry. He is a Senior Fellow at the Pinchot Institute for Conservation, and writes a column for KCET (Los Angeles), entitled Golden Green, which focuses on environmental issues in California and the west.
