Desert Notebooks

Desert Notebooks is Robert Macfarlane meets Elizabeth Kolbert, Elizabeth Rush meets David Wallace-Wells. The book is a very personal, intimately reported kind of nature writing exploring humanity's relationship to and narratives around time, and the ways deep time (or geologic time) can transform our relationship to current notions (and realities) of apocalypseBen Ehrenreich is a proactive, prolific journalist who is very active on social media; last summer, he boarded a boat in the Mediterranean trying to rescue migrants fleeing Syria and North Africa, and live-tweeted the entire experience, including tense confrontations with European coast guards. His previous book was about Palestine, and he cares deeply about the very human costs of rapid climate changeIn Ehrenreich's intimate style, readers will encounter a wide-range of topics, including geological and ecological records of desert catastrophe, Native American end-times mythologies, social and cultural anthropology, personal confessions of the existential struggle to create art in the face of Anthropocene-driven climate change, and some truly lyrical passages about owls Desert Notebooks reads like a quintessential Counterpoint book, environmental humanism at its best, decentering humans from the plot even as it takes human culture as its lens. This book will also resonate with writers and creators Acquired and edited by Counterpoint Editor in Chief Dan Smetanka Bookseller Praise for Desert Notebooks " Desert Notebooks is rich, haunting, and profoundly unique in its exploration of the end times. Ehrenreich takes readers from the wilds of the Mojave to the neon glow of Las Vegas—among coyotes and Joshua trees, to labyrinthine canyons, to a phosphorescent city surrounded by it all. Each landscape is described with stunning beauty. Ehrenreich draws from stories of the Serrano, Mohave, and other desert peoples to inform our understanding of our rapidly changing world, reckoning with the environmental apocalypse that haunts all our futures." —Laura Graveline, Brazos Bookstore (Houston, TX) "When you hear Desert Notebooks described as lyrical by everyone who reads it, please know that they are simply choosing the best word possible to describe it! A critique of progress for the sake of progress, a meditation on life in the desert, an exploration of time, Ben Ehrenreich's book is for poets, writers, environmentalists, nature lovers, and language lovers." —Buffy Cummins, Tattered Cover (Denver, CO)