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.
Tabella dei contenuti
Introduction: Center Points
1. Alamo City
White Gold
City Brew
Organizing for War
Political Legend
Buyer’s Remorse
Danger: Work Ahead
Holy Moses!
Repairing Eden
Springtime
Central Core
Going for Green
Ebb and Flow
Back to Nature
2. Rough Waters
Rough Waters
Storm Warning
Ike’s Wake
3. Borderline Anxieties
Fiery Deaths
Lockup
Highway Robbery
Homeland Insecurity
Why Friendship Park Mattered
Praise Song
Political Agency
Bulldozing Nature
Behind Bars
Walled Off
Just Litter
Wandering in the Wilderness
4. Southland
On Fire
Up in Smoke
Sliding Away
Shaken and Stirred
On the Wild Side
Forget the Garden of Eden
Let It Be
Damaged Desert
Step Back
Net Loss
Shady Dealings
Breathe Deep
Pumped Dry
Course Correction
Mud Fight
Afterword: Homeward Bound
Acknowledgments
Circa l’autore
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.
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