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

Paoletta, who grew up in Albuquerque, NM, examines the mythmaking aspects of the southwestern region of the United States as well as its true history. He writes about people’s misinterpretation of the Southwest as a barren, heat-blasted wasteland. This, he asserts, is not the case. His book shows that from pre-Columbian times to the present, the region has been a vital place where human populations have thrived. He argues that certain cities—Phoenix, Las Vegas, and El Paso, for example—use far too much water and serve as the perfect examples of living the American dream on a nightmarishly myopic scale. He asserts that speculative developers and government officials have altered nature to bend to their whims. He concludes that the lesson learned is that the ecosystem, in the pre-Columbian era, could sustain a reasonable population base, but now these megacities are dangerously overtaxing the environment, he argues. Paoletta’s shows that nature is trying to tell humans something and its hope that people finally listen.