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The Barnes & Noble Review
Marc de Villiers, the award-winning author of Water, takes to the sands with coauthor Sheila Hirtle. Rescuing the great Sahara Desert from its image as an uninhabitable wasteland, this vivid history turns that daunting, bewitching expanse into a fertile ground filled with gushing springs, brightly hued mountains, petrified forests, and a range of cleverly adapted species -- not to mention the now-faded wonders of the great cities Timbuktu and Agadez.

De Villiers and Hirtle spice their text with observations gleaned from their journeys across the great desert, from Egypt to Mauritania. They refer throughout to the accounts of early European wanderers, showing how life among the Tuareg nomads (known as the "blue men" for their richly colored robes) of the deep desert has changed little in a century. Interesting side journeys lead into subjects ranging from the geology of sand dunes to the routes of salt caravans to legends of the djinns, evil spirits of the desert. While much of this is fascinating, the authors risk losing readers at times, as names and places appear, vanish, and recur. Ultimately, however, the lively portrait here reminds us not to view the arid land through the filter of our own dependence on water. Sahara shows how great cultures have long called this desert home. They are familiar with its twists and turns, its beauties and terrors, and their tolerance for its extremes has evolved not by defying the place but by accepting it. Jonathan Cook

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In the parched and seemingly lifeless heart of the Sahara desert, earthworms find enough moisture to survive. Four major mountain ranges interrupt the flow of dunes and gravel plains, and at certain times waterfalls cascade from their peaks. Even the sand amazes: Massive dunes can appear almost overnight, and be gone just as quickly. We think we know the Sahara, the largest and most austere desert on Earth -- yet it is full of surprises, as Marq de Villiers and Sheila Hirtle reveal in this brilliant and evocative biography of the land and its people.

"If you traveled across the United States from Boston to San Diego, you still wouldn't have crossed the Sahara," write de Villiers and Hirtle, painting a vivid picture of this most extraordinary place. They chart the genesis and course of Atlantic hurricanes, many of which are born in the Tibesti mountains of northern Chad, showing that the Sahara, which has a strong influence on weather patterns the world over, is much closer than it seems. They offer a fascinating description of the physics of windblown sand and the formation of dunes and describe in detail the massive aquifers that lie beneath the desert, some filled with water that predates the appearance of humankind on Earth. They marvel at the jagged mountains and at ancient cave paintings deep in the desert that reveal the Sahara was a verdant grassland 10,000 years ago; what's more, this cycle has been repeated several times, and may well repeat again.

Woven through de Villiers and Hirtle's story is a chronicle of the desert's nations and people: the Berbers and Arabs of the north; its black African south, whose ancestors peopled the greatest empires of Old Africa; and the extraordinary nomads -- the Moors, the Tuareg (the famous "blue men"), and the Tubu -- who call the desert home today. Illuminated by the eloquent written testimonies of past travelers, Sahara is a glittering geographic tour conveying the majesty, mystery, and abundance of life in what the outside world thinks of as the Great Emptiness.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

After navigating the physical and political properties of the world's oceans, lakes, rivers and aquifers in his last book, Water, Canadian journalist de Villiers is back on (very) dry land in this new volume but his writing is every bit as fertile. Co-written with Hirtle (with whom he also wrote Into Africa), the book is part travel memoir, part history lesson and part archeological dig, bringing to life the stark landscape of the earth's largest desert. The first half describes how sand dunes take shape so suddenly and travel, wavelike, so quickly; why stands of petrified forests developed; and how relatively mild shifts in the earth's ecosystem and weather patterns transformed the once-verdant grasslands of a mere 10 centuries ago into today's austere environment. The book's second half discusses the ebb and flow of great cities and civilizations along both the northern (Berber and Arab) and southern (black African) edges of the desert, as well as the Moor, Tuareg and Tubu nomads who roamed between them. It also details trade patterns and tribal groupings that have existed over many centuries and takes the reader on a contemporary camel-powered salt-trade caravan. Though this book doesn't have the political urgency or current-events hook of Water, the authors' evocative blend of reportage and concise historical overview makes it a fine read for both armchair travelers and those interested in natural history. (Sept.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

South African-born de Villiers (Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource) and Hirtle (his coauthor on Into Africa: A Journey Through the Ancient Empires) offer a thoroughgoing account of the world's largest desert. They include a complex history (both natural and human), as well as a look at the complicated ethnology and present-day life of the various tribes (Tauregs, Berbers, Moors, and Tubu) that have adapted to this incredibly harsh climate. On occasion, the authors tend toward the overly dramatic ("mountains as black as a sinner's heart"), and the organization seems a bit complex and convoluted, but chapters on the Sahara's natural history and modern conditions as well as a fascinating account of a caravan crossing the desert make this a worthy purchase for larger academic and natural history collections. Tim Markus, Evergreen State Coll. Lib., Olympia, WA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews