Emmy-award winning journalist, author, and native Angeleno Rubén Martínez has authored a new book, Desert America: Boom and Bust in the New Old West, an ” illuminating portrait of the twenty-first-century West.” From the Los Angeles Times review:

“Desert America” is a memoir that also manages to be an excellent work of reportage…

The new old West, Martínez tells us, is where John Wayne filmed many an iconic movie and where immigrants die crossing the desert. It’s home to cookie-cutter subdivisions and water wars. Americans think of its open spaces as a blank page where any loser or dreamer can rewrite his or her life story.

Martinez will be discussing and signing Desert America at Skylight Books on Saturday, September 15 at 5:00 p.m.