Bookshelf

The Sagebrush Ocean: A Natural History of the Great Basin, by Stephen Trimble. University of Nevada Press, Reno, Nevada, 1989. 248 pages. $34.95, hardcover.

What General John Charles Fremont named The Great Basin in 1844 contains about 210,000 square miles and includes most of Nevada, parts of Utah, California, Oregon, Idaho, and Arizona. Author Stephen Trimble suggests there are four Great Basins of varying sizes: the hydrographic, physiographic, historic, and biological. He focuses on the biological Great Basin on the life that exists in what appears to the untrained eye to be a lifeless land.

If there is a common trait of deserts the world over, it is deception. Even in the beds of dry, cracked, sherd-like pieces of once-wet clay, tiny leaves of salt grass still seek sun, grow, and survive. South of the Great Basin, the Mojave and Sonoran deserts nurture the creosote bush, which rival the bristlecone pine in age. North, on the colder Great Basin Desert, the creosote disappears and many related plants generally called sagebrush grace the A Little History of the Navajos, by Oscar H. Lipps. Avanyu Publishing, Inc., Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1989. 136 pages. $19.95, hardcover.

This fascinating book, first published in 1909 by The Torch Press of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is a broad but intimate view of the Navajo people observed by an Anglo 80 years ago. The author, who served as an Indian agent with the Navajos and Nez Perce, dealt with all aspects of contemporary Navajo life. The land they live on, their arts and crafts, customs, wars, mythology, and religious ceremonies all are reported by a man who lived among the Dineh.

The changes that have occurred in the past eight decades have, of course, affected the Navajo and the way they live today. Education, transportation, communication, and acculturation have all contributed to a kind of Navajo that Oscar Lipps would hardly recognize. However, the reader will be amazed at the cultural and ethnic qualities that still characterize the arid ocean Trimble captures with camera and pen.

The Sagebrush Ocean is the seventh publication in the University of Nevada's Great Basin Natural History Series. The trees, birds, geology, shrubs, and, yes, the fish of the Great Basin have all been treated by experts and published by the University Press. Like dessert, Stephen Trimble's The Sagebrush Ocean, has been saved to the last.

Trimble was well prepared to write the definitive work of The Great Basin. The son of a geologist, he roamed the West as a youngster with his father. He attended Colorado College, worked as a park ranger, did graduate study at the University of Arizona, and served as editor and publisher at the Museum of Northern Arizona Press. He has written seven books and edited numerous others dealing with Western lands.

The Sagebrush Ocean contains an appendix listing common and scientific names, 92 black-and-white and 44 color photographs, 24 maps, and 17 pencil drawings. Like the desert it celebrates, the book has a scale and beauty that delights the eye of the beholder.

Navajo. Artistic abilities are silversmithing and weaving are refined rather than abandoned. Lipps observed a love of gambling that has yet to disappear. A strong and vital ceremonial life has endured despite the changes. The Navajo language remains in place, strong and healthy. The readers of A Little History of the Navajos will learn much about how the Navajos once were and even more about who they are today today much of this has changed, the older forms continue to hold the public's interest.

The extensive Denman collection of this style is now owned by the Indian Arts and Crafts Board of the Department of the Interior. More than 100 paintings are here beautifully reproduced in color.

The author provides descriptions of the paintings and a biographical sketch of each artist, plus sections about each cultural group, elaborating on their way of life, religion, and art. Robert C. Euler

When the Rainbow Touches Down: The Artists and Stories behind the Apache, Navajo, Rio Grande Pueblo and Hopi Paintings in the William and Leslie Van Ness Denman Collection, by Tryntje Van Ness Seymour. Seattle, University of Washington Press. Distributed for the Heard Museum, Phoenix, 1989. 394 pages. $50.00, paperback.

For more than 30 years after its beginning in 1932, Southwestern Indian fine art painting on paper and canvas was represented by a two-dimensional style. Although