AMERICAN OASIS

Population growth and its discontents in the desert.

Few books toggle between natural science and Vegas nightclubs, but that’s what Paoletta does in his sweeping debut. The widely published journalist describes the geologic events that produced New Mexico’s “granulated gypsum” hills and an “andesite peak” in Texas, but he’s mainly concerned with the Southwest’s relatively recent past. He carefully chronicles how Spanish and Anglo newcomers ran roughshod over indigenous peoples and “communities of color.” These sections are nicely written but inevitably derivative. The Santa Fe native is bolder, and more edifying, when focusing on the debate that will define the region’s future. Broadly speaking, one side recognizes the land’s “inherent limitations,” while the other believes that the Southwest’s remarkable economic growth—enabled by huge dams and related infrastructure projects—should proceed apace. The latter outlook, Paoletta explains, was shaped by organizations with vast yet underappreciated influence. In the 1950s, Arizona Highways, a magazine of nature photos and Phoenix fandom, reached 200,000 subscribers, 93% of whom didn’t live in the state. Such boosterism helped triple Arizona’s population in the years after World War II. Surprisingly—yet not without reason—Paoletta argues that Las Vegas is part of the sustainability vanguard. The city may get “drier and drier,” but its water recycling and conservation initiatives place it “among the most efficient municipal water users in the world.” Though Paoletta smartly synthesizes the concerns of the writers, laborers, and others he interviews, he’s not always charitably minded. He writes of “the studied blindness of the colonizer” when describing fellow white people he encounters on a tour of historic houses. Yet the evidence plainly backs his conclusion that the Southwest needs to increase resource conservation and other “communal” practices.

A solid, occasionally exceptional look at an arid region’s deep footprint.