The Immeasurable World

by William Atkins

  13 “High Dune,” Mars, from the mast camera of NASA’s Curiosity rover. Part of the “Bagnold Dunes” field of active dark dunes along the northwestern flank of Mount Sharp © NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  GENERAL

  E. F. Adolph, Physiology of Man in the Desert (New York: Interscience Publishers, 1947)

  W. H. Auden, The Enchafèd Flood; Or the Romantic Iconography of the Sea (New York: Random House, 1950)

  R. A. Bagnold, Libyan Sands: Travel in a Dead World (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1935)

  ———, The Physics of Blown Sand and Desert Dunes (London: Methuen, 1941)

  Jean Baudrillard, America (London: Verso, 2010)

  Ron Cooke, Andrew Warren, Andrew Goudie (eds), Desert Geomorphology (London: UCL Press, 1993)

  Isabelle Eberhardt, The Oblivion Seekers (London: Peter Owen, 1988)

  Uwe George, trans. Richard and Clara Winston, In the Deserts of This Earth (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977)

  Andrew S. Goudie, Arid and Semi-Arid Geomorphology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013)

  Roslynn D. Haynes, Desert: Nature and Culture (London: Reaktion, 2013)

  Anton Imeson, Desertification, Land Degradation and Sustainability (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012)

  Robert Irwin, Camel (London: Reaktion, 2010)

  Edmond Jabès, trans. Keith Waldrop, If There Were Anywhere But Desert (Barrytown: Station Hill Press, 1988)

  ———, trans. Pierre Joris, From the Desert to the Book (Barrytown: Station Hill Press, 1990)

  Sven Lindqvist, trans. Joan Tate, Saharan Journey (London: Granta, 2012)

  Pierre Loti, trans. Jay Paul Minn, The Desert (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1993; originally published in French in 1896 as Le Désert)

  Gregory McNamee (ed.), The Desert Reader: A Literary Companion (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2003)

  Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, trans. Lewis Galantière, Wind, Sand and Stars (London: Heinemann, 1939)

  ———, trans. Stuart Gilbert, The Wisdom of the Sands (London: Hollis & Carter, 1952)

  Paul Bigelow Sears, Deserts on the March (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1935)

  Paul Shepard, Nature and Madness (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1982)

  David S. G. Thomas (ed.), Arid Zone Geomorphology (Chichester: Wiley, 2011)

  ——— and Nicholas J. Middleton, Desertification: Exploding the Myth (Chichester: Wiley, 1994)

  Yi-Fu Tuan, Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974)

  ———, Landscapes of Fear (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980)

  ———, Romantic Geography (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2013)

  Michael Welland, The Desert: Lands of Lost Borders (London: Reaktion, 2015)

  Peter Wild, The Opal Desert: Explorations of Fantasy and Reality in the American Southwest (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999)

  1 THE DESERT LIBRARY: THE EMPTY QUARTER, OMAN

  David C. Arkless, The Secret War: Dhofar 1971 (London: Kimber, 1988)

  John Beasant: Oman: The True-life Drama and Intrigue of an Arab State (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 2002)

  Peter Brent, Far Arabia: Explorers of the Myth (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1977)

  Bill Broyles et al., “W. J. McGee’s ‘Desert Thirst as Disease’,” Journal of the Southwest 30, no. 2 (1988): 222–27. McGee’s essay was originally published in Interstate Medical Journal (see below)

  Richard Burton (trans.), The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, 16 vols. (London: Kama Shastra Society, 1885–88)

  Mark Cocker, Loneliness & Time: British Travel Writing in the Twentieth Century (London: Secker & Warburg, 1992)

  Charles Montague Doughty, Travels in Arabia Deserta (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1888)

  Felix Fabri, Wanderings in the Holy Land (London: Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society, 1892)

  K. W. Glennie, Oman’s Geological Heritage (Muscat: Petroleum Development Oman, 2006)

  T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom (London: Penguin, 2000)

  Alexander Maitland, Wilfred Thesiger: The Life of the Great Explorer (London: Harper Perennial, 2007)

  Arthur Mangin, The Desert World: The Scenery, Animal and Vegetable Life and Physical Character of the Wilderness and Waste Places of the Earth (London: T. Nelson and Sons, 1872)

  W. J. McGee, “Desert Thirst as Disease,” Interstate Medical Journal 12 (1906): 1–23

  James Morris, Sultan in Oman (London: Faber & Faber, 1957)

  William Harman Norton, “The Influence of the Desert on Early Islam,” from The Journal of Religion 4, no. 4 (July 1924): 383–96

  Harry St. John Philby, The Empty Quarter (London: 1933, Constable)

  Andrew Taylor, Travelling the Sands: Sagas of Exploration in the Arabian Peninsula (Dubai: Motivate Publishing, 1995)

  Wilfred Thesiger, Arabian Sands (London: Longmans, Green, 1959)

  ———, The Life of My Choice (London: HarperCollins, 2000)

  Bertram Thomas, Alarms and Excursions in Arabia (London: Allen & Unwin, 1931)

  ———, Arabia Felix (London: Jonathan Cape, 1932)

  Tetsuro Watsuji, trans. Geoffrey Bownas, Climate and Culture (Tokyo: Hokuseido Press, 1971)

  2 FIELD OF THUNDER: THE GREAT VICTORIA DESERT, AUSTRALIA

  Lorna Arnold, Britain, Australia and the Bomb: The Nuclear Tests and Their Aftermath (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2006)

  Daisy Bates, The Passing of the Aborigines (London: John Murray, 1938)

  Len Beadell, Blast the Bush (London: Angus and Robertson, 1967)

  ———, Beating About the Bush (Adelaide: Rigby, 1976)

  Julia Blackburn, Daisy Bates in the Desert (London: Secker & Warburg, 1994)

  Geoffrey Blainey, The Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia’s History (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1975)

  Paul Carter, The Road to Botany Bay (London: Faber & Faber, 1987)

  David Day, Claiming a Continent: A New History of Australia (Sydney: HarperPerennial, 2005)

  Charles Duguid, Doctor and the Aborigines (Adelaide: Rigby, 1972)

  Edward John Eyre, Journals of Expeditions of Discovery into Central Australia (London: T. and W. Boone, 1845)

  John Greenway, The Last Frontier (London: David-Poynter, 1973)

  Roslynn D. Haynes, Seeking the Centre: The Australian Desert in Literature, Art and Film (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)

  Michael Hughes, Spectre of Maralinga (London: W. H. Allen, 1985)

  Sven Lindqvist, trans. Sarah Death, Terra Nullius: A Journey Through No One’s Land (London: Granta, 2007)

  Christobel Mattingley and Ken Hampton (eds), Survival in Our Own Land: “Aboriginal” Experiences in “South Australia” Since 1836 (Adelaide: Wakefield Press, 1988)

  Robert Milliken, No Conceivable Injury: The Story of Britain and Australia’s Atomic Cover-up (London: Penguin, 1985)

  Ferenc Morton Szasz, The Day the Sun Rose Twice: The Story of the Trinity Site Nuclear Explosion, July 16, 1945 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984)

  Penny Van Oosterzee, The Centre: The Natural History of Australia’s Desert Regions (Chatswood: Reed, 1991)

  Kingsley Palmer and Maggie Brady, Diet and Dust in the Desert: An Aboriginal Community, Maralinga Lands, South Australia (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 1991)

  John Pilger, A Secret Country (London: Jonathan Cape, 1989)

  Royal Commission into British Nuclear Tests in Australia, The Report of the Royal Commission into British Nuclear Tests in Australia, 3 vols. (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1985)

  Adrian Tame and F. P. J. Robotham, Maralinga: British A
-Bomb Australian Legacy (Melbourne: Fontana, 1982)

  W. H. Tietkens, Journal of the Central Australian Exploring Expedition, 1889 (Adelaide: C. E. Bristow, 1891)

  Frank Walker, Maralinga (Sydney: Hachette Australia, 2014)

  Don Watson, The Bush (Melbourne: Penguin, 2014)

  Michael Williams, The Making of the South Australian Landscape (London: Academic Press, 1974)

  Yalata and Oak Valley Communities with Christobel Mattingley, Maralinga: The Anangu Story (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2009)

  3 TROUBLEMAKERS: THE GOBI DESERT AND THE TAKLAMAKAN DESERT, CHINA

  Neville Agnew (ed.), Conservation of Ancient Sites on the Silk Road (Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute, 1997)

  Ai Chen Wu, Turkistan Tumult (London: Methuen & Co, 1940)

  Linda K. Benson, Across China’s Gobi: The Lives of Evangeline French, Mildred Cable and Francesca French of the China Inland Mission (Norwalk: Eastbridge, 2008)

  Charles Blackmore, The Worst Desert on Earth: Crossing the Taklamakan (London: John Murray, 1995)

  Gardner Bovingdon, The Uyghurs (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010)

  Tania Branigan, “China Charges Uighur Scholar Ilham Tohti with Separatism” Guardian, 30 July 2014

  Chris Buckley, “Xinhua Details Charges in Case Against Ilham Tohti,” New York Times, 25 September 2014

  Mildred Cable with Francesca French, The Gobi Desert (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1942). Reprinted, with an introduction by Marina Warner (London: Virago, 1984)

  ———, Through Jade Gate and Central Asia: An Account of Journeys Through Kansu, Turkestan and the Gobi Desert (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1937).

  ——— and Evangeline French, A Desert Journal: Letters from Central Asia (London: Constable, 1934)

  ———, Something Happened (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1933)

  Simon Denyer, “Bullet Trains Tighten China’s Embrace of Restive Xinjiang,” Washington Post, 10 September 2014

  Michael Dillon, Xinjiang: China’s Muslim Far Northwest (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004)

  Ding Xiao Lun (ed.), Entering Xinjiang (Urumqi: Xinjiang Art & Photography, 2006)

  David Eimer, The Emperor Far Away: Travels at the Edge of China (London: Bloomsbury, 2014)

  Peter Fleming, News From Tartary (London: Jonathan Cape, 1936)

  Sven Hedin, Through Asia (London: Methuen, 1898)

  Nick Holdstock, China’s Forgotten People: Xinjiang, Terror and the Chinese State (London: I. B. Taurus, 2015)

  Peter Hopkirk, Foreign Devils on the Silk Road (London: John Murray, 1980)

  Justin Jacobs, “Confronting Indiana Jones: Chinese Nationalism, Historical Imperialism, and the Criminalization of Aurel Stein and the Raiders of Dunhuang, 1899–1944,” in Sherman Cochran and Paul G. Pickowicz (eds.), China on the Margins (Ithaca, NY: Cornell East Asia Program, 2010)

  Jun Ma, China’s Water Crisis (Norwalk: EastBridge, 2004)

  Jonathan Kaiman, “Chinese Media Reports Fifty Killed in Xinjiang in Revision of Death Toll” Guardian, 26 September 2014

  Ellsworth Huntington, The Pulse of Asia: A Journey in Central Asia (New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co, 1907)

  W. E. Johns, Biggles in the Gobi (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1953)

  Owen Lattimore, The Desert Road to Turkestan (New York: Little Brown, 1929)

  Ma Jian, Red Dust: A Path Through China (London: Chatto & Windus, 2001)

  Ella Maillart, trans. John Rodker, Turkestan Solo (New York: Putnam, 1935)

  Mao Tse-Tung, Selected Works (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1967)

  James A. Millward, Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang (London: Hurst, 2007)

  William James Platt, Three Women: Mildred Cable, Francesca French, Evangeline French (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1964)

  Eva May Sawyer, Mildred Cable (London: Pickering & Inglis, 1962)

  Vikram Seth, From Heaven Lake: Travel Through Sinkiang and Tibet (London: Chatto & Windus, 1983)

  Judith Shapiro, Mao’s War Against Nature: Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)

  Aurel Stein, Ruins of Desert Cathay: Personal Narrative of Explorations in Central Asia and Westernmost China (London: Macmillan, 1912)

  ———, Sand-Buried Ruins of Khotan: Personal Narrative of a Journey of Archaeological and Geographical Exploration in Chinese Turkestan (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1903)

  Phyllis Thompson, Desert Pilgrim: The Story of Mildred Cable’s Venture for God in Central Asia (London: China Inland Mission, 1957)

  Colin Thubron, Shadow of the Silk Road (London: Chatto & Windus, 2006)

  Rian Thum, The Sacred Routes of Uyghur History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2014)

  Jeremy Tredinnick, Xinjiang: China’s Central Asia (Hong Kong: Odyssey, 2012)

  Christian Tyler, Wild West China: The Taming of Xinjiang (London: John Murray, 2003)

  Joanna Waley-Cohen, Exile in Mid-Qing China (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1991)

  Jonathan Watts, When a Billion Chinese Jump (London: Faber & Faber, 2010)

  Roderick Whitfield, Susan Whitfield and Neville Agnew, Cave Temples of Dunhuang: Art and History on the Silk Road (London: British Library, 2000)

  Susan Whitfield, Life Along the Silk Road (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999)

  Sally Hovey Wriggins, The Silk Road Journey with Xuanzang (Boulder: Westview, 2004)

  Xuncheng Xia, Desertification and Control of Blown Sand Disasters in Xinjiang (Beijing: Science Press, 1993)

  Xuanzang, trans. S. Beal, Buddhist Records of the Western World (London: Truebner’s Oriental Series, 1884)

  Yi-Fu Tuan, China (Harlow: Longmans, 1970)

  4 BASTARD STURGEON: THE ARALKUM, KAZAKHSTAN

  Chingiz Aitmatov, trans. John French, The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years (London: Macdonald and Co., 1986)

  Tom Bissell, Chasing the Sea (New York: Pantheon Books, 2003)

  Leonid Brezhnev, The Virgin Lands (Moscow: Progress, 1978)

  Alexey Ivanovich Butakov, “Survey of the Aral Sea,” in Journal of the Royal Geographical Society 23 (London, 1823): 93–101

  Rob Ferguson, The Devil and the Disappearing Sea: A True Story About the Aral Sea Catastrophe (Vancouver: Raincoast Books, 2003)

  Michael H. Glantz (ed.), Creeping Environmental Problems and Sustainable Development in the Aral Sea Basin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)

  Peter Hopkirk, The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia (London: John Murray, 1990)

  George Luckyj, Shevchenko’s Unforgotten Journey (Toronto: Canadian Scholar’s Press, 1996)

  Patrick Marnham, Snake Dance: Journeys Beneath a Nuclear Sky (London: Chatto & Windus, 2013)

  Philip Micklin et al. (eds.), The Aral Sea (Berlin: Springer, 2014)

  David Moon, The Plough that Broke the Steppes: Agriculture and Environment on Russia’s Grasslands, 1700–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)

  G. I. Reznichenko, The Aral Sea Tragedy (Moscow: Novosti, 1992)

  Maria Shahgedanova (ed.), The Physical Geography of Northern Eurasia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)

  Struan Stevenson, Stalin’s Legacy: The Soviet War on Nature (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2012)

  Chokan Chingisovich Valikhanov, trans. John and Robert Mitchell, The Russians in Central Asia (London: Edward Stanford, 1856)

  Pavlo Zaitsev, Taras Shevchenko (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988)

  Peter Zavialov, Physical Oceanography of the Dying Aral Sea (New York: Springer, 2005)

  Igor S. Zonn et al. (eds), The Aral Sea Encyclopaedia (Berlin: Springer, 2009)

  5 BETWEEN GREAT FIRES: THE SONORAN DESERT, USA

  Edward Abbey
, Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968)

  ———, Confessions of a Barbarian: Selections from the Journals of Edward Abbey (London: Little Brown, 1994)

  ———, The Best of Edward Abbey (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 2005)

  John Alcock, Sonoran Desert Summer (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1990)

  John Annerino, Dead in Their Tracks: Crossing America’s Desert Borderlands (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1999)

  Mary Austin, The Land of Little Rain (New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1903)

  ———, Stories from the Country of Lost Borders (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987)

  Reyner Banham, Scenes in America Deserta (Salt Lake City: Gibbs M. Smith, 1982)

  Julio L. Betancourt and Robert H. Webb, Requiem for the Santa Cruz: An Environmental History of an Arizona River (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2014)

  Charles Bowden, Blue Desert (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1986)

  ———, Red Line (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1989)

  ———, Desierto: Memories of the Future (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1991)

  ———, The Sonoran Desert (New York: H. N. Abrams, 1997)

  ———, Trinity (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009)

  Jim Corbett, The Sanctuary Church (Wallingford: Pendle Hill Publications, 1986)

  ———, Goatwalking (New York: Viking Penguin, 1991)

  Miriam Davidson, Convictions of the Heart: Jim Corbett and the Sanctuary Movement (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1988)

  Patrick W. Ettinger, Imaginary Lines: Border Enforcement and the Origins of Undocumented Immigration, 1882–1930 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009)

  Linda M. Gregonis, The Hohokam Indians of the Tucson Basin (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1979)

  W. Eugene Hollon, The Great American Desert (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966)

  William Temple Hornaday, Camp-Fires on Desert and Lava (London: T. Werner Laurie, 1908)

  Edmund Carroll Jaeger, The California Deserts (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1955)