American Oasis: Finding the Future in the Cities of the Southwest

The American Southwest’s past is a map to the rest of the country’s future, according to this roving debut. Journalist Paoletta argues that the ways in which imperial violence, industrial expansion, mass migration, and the management of scarce water resources have played out in the arid desert region are a window onto what a climate-change–altered future will look like elsewhere. Paoletta puts a positive spin on what sounds like a bleak premise by emphasizing the region’s “deep history of struggle... of multifarious peoples contending with each other and the unforgiving environment” to forge prosperous communities. He organizes his narrative around “the triumphs and failures” of this history—which range from the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 (when “Indigenous communities managed... to fully jettison” colonizers from their turf) to the popular mid-20th-century tourism magazine Arizona Highways (originally a state-run map publisher), whose editors portrayed the desert as not “nearly so desolate as... readers believed,” contributing greatly to Phoenix’s population boom and transformation into a teeming metropolis (a development Paoletta elegiacally pegs as both an astonishing triumph of human will—“a paradise [forged] out of whole cloth”—as well as one of colonial conquest and ecological folly). Peppered with fascinating historical tidbits gleaned as Paoletta traverses the region and encounters colorful characters, the book can sometimes meander a little far from its goal. Still, it makes for an enjoyable and immersive travelogue. (Jan.)