Desert Rat

About the Book

Desert Rat: Travels In The Wild West is a narrative of three decades of travel in the deserts of North America. Inspired by the classic desert exploration books, Tom Good has followed the old mining roads in search of solitude and adventure. From Death Valley to Big Bend and into the harsh lava fields of Sonora, Mexico he describes the beauty and dangers of these arid lands.

The author’s criteria for desert adventure is that if you can walk out to a highway it is not the real thing. He dreams of remote desert camps beyond the highest dunes where a single human error, a faulty spark plug, a leaking water container or too much Australian lager, eliminates the possibility of returning to civilization.

Desert Rat also includes descriptions of the animals and plants of the desert and includes a chapter on astronomy in the desert. One of the passionate arguments of the book is the need to protect the desert from urban encroachment and blight. There is also a chapter devoted to a discussion of the role of the military in the desert.

Tom Good has read the old issues of Desert magazine to locate every nook and cranny (from scorching sand dunes to lonely Palm Oases) of the Great Basin, Sonoran, Mojave and Chihuahuan deserts.

About the Author

Tom Good was born in Altadena, California in 1945 and is a graduate of San Jose State College. He is a former staff writer and editor of the Portland Scribe, a former book reviewer for Telos, and has contributed to the Los Angeles Times Book Review, The Nation, In These Times, Win, and Trip. He is the author of “Phoenix Rising: Explosive Growth In The Sunbelt” in Fire In The Hearth: The Radical Politics of Place In America edited by Mike Davis, Steven Hiatt, Marie Kennedy, Susan Ruddick and Michael Sprinker (Verso: London, 1990).