Char Miller 
On the Edge [EPUB ebook] 
Water, Immigration, and Politics in the Southwest

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.

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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

Over de auteur

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.