William deBuys
Selected WorksClimate Change
"This is on the short list of key books for anyone who lives in or loves the American southwest--with scientific precision and understated emotional power, it explains what your future holds. If you live elsewhere: it's a deep glimpse into one place on our fast-changing planet, and you'll be able to do many extrapolations. Remarkable work!"
--Bill MCKibben, author
Eaarth: Making Life on a Tough New Planet "As deBuys wanders from Las Vegas to Mesa Verde to the Glen Canyon Dam, he gives the past and present their due as he maps our way to a drier future. No longer are aridity and climate change in the Southwest only of regional interest; deBuys is writing for America and we should all listen to what he has to say.” --Colleen Mondor, Booklist Memoir
Supple and silvery ... The Walk defines hope in terms of mountain and sky, river and pine, mindfulness and love.
--Donna Seaman, Booklist Biography and Memoir
"It brims with gifts of language and vision." --Barbara Kingsolver, New York Times Book Review
History
"This is a grand book, valuable and exquisite on level after level."
--Charles Wilkinson
"This book is fascinating from beginning to end."
--New Mexico Magazine
e.g. Fiction, History, Magazine Articles, etc. goes here
"This compilation, with skillful editing and commentary by William deBuys, is an essential book for anyone who ventures west of the hundredth meridian." -- Bruce Babbitt, Secretary of the Interior, 1993-2001 |
Works
A Great Aridness
“The untenable water situation in the Southwest has been the subject of several notable titles (Cadillac Desert, 1986; Running Dry, 2010). Now deBuys takes a broad approach in a manner that affirms his standing beside John McPhee and Wallace Stegner. While he focuses on the environmental science of heat and aridity, he also acknowledges the uncertain nature of climate variability itself. As deBuys wanders from Las Vegas to Mesa Verde to the Glen Canyon Dam, he gives the past and present their due as he maps our way to a drier future. No longer are aridity and climate change in the Southwest only of regional interest; deBuys is writing for America and we should all listen to what he has to say.” --Colleen Mondor, Booklist
The Walk
Set, like River of Traps, on the farm the author has tended since 1976, The Walk explores the interweaving of personal history and natural history in a familiar landscape. With compressed and flawless prose, the book demonstrates the power of place to transform despair into reconciliation and hope.
River of Traps: A New Mexico Mountain Life
(Photography by Alex Harris) River of Traps combines words and photographs to tell the story of Jacobo Romero, an old-time northern New Mexico villager who befriends the authors and initiates them into knowledge of land, water, and a way of life long rooted in the mountain valley that became their common home. Critically acclaimed and widely admired, River of Traps has justifiably been called a western classic.
Salt Dreams: Land and Water in Low-Down California
(Photographs by Joan Myers) In low places consequences collect, and in all of North America you cannot get much lower than the Imperial Valley of southern California, where the waters of the Colorado River sustain a billion-dollar agricultural industry. The consequences of that industry drain into the accidentally man-made Salton Sea, which today is in desperate environmental trouble.
Seeing Things Whole: The Essential John Wesley Powell
Edited by William deBuys "This is a superb selection of the most important writings of the great American explorer, scientist, and conservationist. Powell's name has often been evoked over the past century, but few people have had access to the full range of his vigorous prose. Now deBuys has given us an exceptionally good introduction to the man, his ideas, and his America." - -Donald Worster, Author of A River Runningwest: The Life Of John Wesley Powell
Enchantment and Exploitation: The Life and Hard Times of a New Mexico Mountain Range
"Treating the Sangre de Cristo mountain range... from geologic, historic, ethnographic, and ecological points of view, William deBuys has written an eloquent, elegant, and continuously informative book." --Robert Adams, New York Review of Books |
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