Invites readers to explore the smallest and most unique southwestern desert, the beautiful Mojave--Provided by publisher.

THE THIRD LARGEST DESERT PARK in the country, Mojave National Preserve protects 1.6 million acres of spectacular arid lands at the heart of the Mojave Desert. Part of the celebrated Great Basin province, it is a spellbinding region of mighty mountain ranges rising thousands of feet above vast inland basins. Famous for the majestic Kelso Dunes, the Devils Playground, and the world¹s largest Joshua tree forest, the preserve also holds considerable natural and cultural wealth, including a wild range of landscapes, striking plant communities, and a rich mining past. Above all, it is a land of contrasts, alternatively forlorn and vibrant with life, stark and colorful, blanketed in snow in the winter, awash with wildflowers in the spring, and scorching hot in the summer. Being high-desert country and generally a little cooler than Death Valley, topographically less rugged, and far less visited, it offers a tremendous potential for comparatively easier hiking in complete solitude.

It is a desert like no other, stretching from the eastern outskirts of Los Angeles across the width of Southern California and into parts of Arizona, Nevada, and Utah. The Mojave Desert's attractions include Death Valley, the Joshua Tree National Park, the Mojave National Preserve, Las Vegas, Hoover Dam, Lake Mead, the Colorado River, Palm Springs, the Cabazon Dinosaurs, Calico Ghost Town, and dozens of Route 66 landmarks. It is the most spectacular desert on Earth, and it draws more tourists each year than all other deserts of the world combined. Mojave Desert is the first book of its kind, using rare and vintage postcards to provide a pictorial, historical grand tour of this American wonderland.

A vast land of mineral wealth, eerie beauty, and countless contrasts, the Mojave Desert joined the Union of the United States on September 5, 1850, and became part of the new San Bernadino County three years later. A massive, parched region, its varied terrain rolls eastward from the Antelope Valley to the Colorado River. The nation's highest temperature on record occurred in this region; on the other extreme, the freezing winters here shroud the land in ice and snow. This thirsty expanse climbs to over 4,000 feet, with a great number of different wildlife forms making their homes among the hills. Featuring over 200 evocative and illustrative images, The Mojave Desert is an entertaining and educational source of information about the area and its unique history.

"This title presents new research on the Mojave Desert and the contributors discuss the desert from several perspectives including regional threats such as expanding human populations, climate change, atmospheric nitrogen deposition and invasive plants, the impact of roads in a desert ecosystem, soils and plant communities, shrinking aquifers and the monitoring and sustainability of this fragile ecosystem." --NHBS Environment Bookstore.

The cult-y pocket-size field guide to the strange and intriguing secrets of the Mojave—its myths and legends, outcasts and oddballs, flora, fauna, and UFOs—becomes the definitive, oracular book of the desert For the past five years, Desert Oracle has existed as a quasi-mythical, quarterly periodical available to the very determined only by subscription or at the odd desert-town gas station or the occasional hipster boutique, its canary-yellow-covered, forty-four-page issues handed from one curious desert zealot to the next, word spreading faster than the printers could keep up with. It became a radio show, a podcast, a live performance. Now, for the first time—and including both classic and new, never-before-seen revelations—Desert Oracle has been bound between two hard covers and is available to you. Straight out of Joshua Tree, California, Desert Oracle is “The Voice of the Desert”: a field guide to the strange tales, singing sand dunes, sagebrush trails, artists and aliens, authors and oddballs, ghost towns and modern legends, musicians and mystics, scorpions and saguaros, out there in the sand. Desert Oracle is your companion at a roadside diner, around a campfire, in your tent or cabin (or high-rise apartment or suburban living room) as the wind and the coyotes howl outside at night. From journal entries of long-deceased adventurers to stray railroad ad copy, and musings on everything from desert flora, rumored cryptid sightings, and other paranormal phenomena, Ken Layne's Desert Oracle collects the weird and the wonderful of the American Southwest into a single, essential volume.