The importance of place in our search for meaning The Great Basin encompasses the vast deserts and mountains of Utah and Nevada and a complex overlay of faiths. Historical geographer Francaviglia has been traversing and contemplating this austere, mysterious, and majestic land for four decades and creates a palimpsest similar to George Johnson's portrait of New Mexico, Fire in the Mind (1995), as he illuminates the interplay between landscape and the imagination. Fluently scientific yet open to other modes of perception, he parses the region's natural history in connection with Native American spirituality, Mormon beliefs and culture, and the apocalyptic presence of nuclear weapons, which dramatize as nothing ever has before the cosmic dance between creation and destruction. Plainspoken yet eloquent, Francaviglia is at once awed by, for example, the startling phenomenon known as dust devils, conversant in their physical dynamics, attuned to their mystical aspects, and intrigued by the implications of their name, which is part of the desert's remarkably religious lexicon. An exceptionally illuminating travelogue, Francaviglia's many-faceted inquiry reveals the genius loci of a unique and powerful place. Donna Seaman Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved "Richard V. Francaviglia has given us a nuanced and multidisciplinary reading of landscape as religious text, and situates the Great Basin within the larger history of human spirituality. "Believing in Place is not only an important addition to the literature of the region, but an essential study in how we construct intimate place out of the great space of the American West." Richard V. Francaviglia is professor of history and geography at the University of Texas at Arlington and serves as director for the Center for Greater Southwestern Studies and the History of Cartography. Used Book in Good Condition