On the Edge - water, immigration, and politics in the southwest

A timely book that deals with regional identity and the subject of limited water resources in our age of pronounced droughts On the Edge grew out of a lifetime spent living and traveling across the American Southwest, from San Antonio to Los Angeles. Internal to the various U.S. 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 often arid terrain, an ecosystem that burns easily and floods often and defies our efforts to nestle in its foothills, canyons, and washes. It explores 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. Char Miller, 2013, 248 pages, softcover