Believing In Place: A Spiritual Geography Of The Great Basin - Hardcover

Francaviglia, Richard V.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0874175429 ISBN 13: 9780874175424

Publisher: University of Nevada Press, 2003

Synopsis

Believing in Place is a reflection on the ways that human needs and spiritual traditions can shape our perceptions of the land. That the Great Basin has inspired such a complex variety of responses is partly due to its enigmatic vastness and isolation, partly to the remarkable range of peoples who have found themselves in the region. Using not only the materials of traditional geography but folklore, anthropology, Native American and Euro-American religion, contemporary politics, and New Age philosophies, Francaviglia has produced a timely investigation of the role of human conceptions of place in that space we call the Great Basin.

About this title

About the Author:

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.

From Booklist:

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
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About this edition

• Publisher: University of Nevada Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0874175429
• ISBN 13: 9780874175424
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 312