Long frequented by pirates and haunted by pariahs, Baja California has become a favorite destination for whale watchers, hikers, and scuba divers. For Bruce Berger it has been more. In Almost an Island , he takes readers beyond the Baja of guidebooks and offers a wildly entertaining look at the real Baja California. Eight hundred miles long, Baja California is the remotest region of the Sonoran desert, a land of volcanic cliffs, glistening beaches, fantastical boojum trees, and some of the greatest primitive murals in the Western Hemisphere. In Almost an Island , Berger recounts tales from his three decades in this extraordinary place, enriching his account with the peninsula's history, its politics, and its probable future—rendering a striking panorama of this land so close to the United States, so famous, and so little known. Readers will meet a cast of characters as eccentric as the place itself: Brandy, who ranges the desert in a sand buggy while breathing from an oxygen tank; Katie, the chanteuse; nuns illegally raising pigs. They will encounter the tourist madness of a total eclipse, the story of the heir to an oasis, a musical Mata Hari, rare pronghorn antelope, and a pet tarantula. In prose as glittering as this desert engulfed by the sea, Almost an Island is a fascinating journey into the human heart of a spectacular land. Berger, a Western States Book Award Winner for The Telling Distance (Univ. of Arizona, 1990), lived and traveled in Baja, CA, for three decades. Here he paints a vivid picture of this unique place he refers to as "almost an island." In a fight to protect this shrinking wilderness, he covers the history of the native peoples, the invasion of the Spaniards, modern-day tourists, contemporary settlements, and the everyday life of the permanent and transient residents of the peninsula. He also charts how the 20th century has finally caught up with Baja; as tourism flourishes, the rich history disappears. More homage to a once-wild corner of the North American continent than guidebook, this is recommended for public and academic libraries.?Sandra Knowles, Univ. of South Carolina Sch. of Medicine Lib., Columbia Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. "Writing with the grace of nightfall, Berger knits a handful of chance encounters together with cultural and natural history to produce a crystalline, indiosyncratic portrait of Baja." — Kirkus Reviews "Relaxed and amiable in tone . . . Lyrical." — New York Times Book Review "An engrossing journal of fast-paced change." — San Diego Union-Tribune "...The answer is Brucer Berger, a poet and writer of personal essays that bring desert towns and distant arroyos to life, that cross wires with physics, that describe the arts and the quirky characters of our own species." -- Bloomsbury Review Bruce Berger is the author of There Was a River  and The Telling Distance , which won a Western States Book Award and a Colorado Authors Award. He lives in a three-room cabin in Aspen, Colorado, and spends part of each year in Baja California. In addition to writing, has also played the piano professionally both in the United States and in Spain. Used Book in Good Condition