"American Oasis" by Kyle Paoletta

Kyle Paoletta’s American Oasis comes with a subtitle: Finding the Future in the Cities of the Southwest.Born in Santa Fe, Paoletta grew up in Albuquerque. The native Southwesterner said he had to leave the region, to live in Boston and New York to find an appreciation for his old stomping grounds. After more than 10 years in the East, he discovered not only general ignorance about the Southwest but an indifferent attitude about a part of the country that he feels has an important story to tell.“It took wildfire smoke from Canada turning the sky in New York red for many media members to fully digest the enormous danger that people across the West have been living with for decades,” said Paoletta.“For so many Americans, it is only in recent years that the climate has begun to be understood as a hostile force. We southwesterners have never known anything different,” he said.But American Oasis is more than a call to arms; it’s history with spotlights thrown on some of the fascinating characters that inhabit the Southwest.We learn about Raymond Carlson, the former editor of Arizona Highways, the magazine that showcased the Arizona desert and life for the rest of America. There’s Jay Armes, who became a national celebrity from El Paso despite the loss of two arms in a freak accident at the age of 12.When we get to Las Vegas, Paoletta leads with the Kim Sisters, who entranced casino patrons with their musical act in the early 1960s. There’s background on Bugsy Siegel, who opened the lavish Flamingo Hotel in 1946 before he was shot dead in 1947. Then there’s Vida Lin and the Asian Community Development Council of Nevada, a group serving the more than 250,000 Asians and Pacific Islanders who now live in Clark County.The quote from Hunter Thompson seems appropriate in describing the Vegas scene: “In a closed society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught.”But Paoletta confesses to liking Vegas. “No matter how discomfiting I might find the dollar-worshipping ethos of Las Vegas, at least it’s honest,” he wrote.For all its excess, Vegas conserves its water and ironically understands the need for conservation when it comes to nature, said Paoletta, suggesting that the lessons of the desert—respecting the limitations of the landscape—need to be understood by the rest of the country. America has always been a nation of the grow but as the Southwest shows—with climbing temperatures and water scarcity—that attitude can’t go on forever, said Paoletta, adding, “Our duration (as people) will depend on our willingness to attend to the inherent logic of our home.".