Will I love House of Rain?

This fascinating account provides something I've long craved: a big-picture view of the people that inhabited the cliff-dwellings and made the rock art that is so ubiquitous in the parts of the US southwest desert that I've visited so often and a viable theory about what really happened to them. It's combined with a travelogue of the author's own reflections as he pursues various adventures of outdoor discovery, which I might have lost patience with in another book but in this one found absolutely palatable and even somewhat gripping. It also doesn't hurt that the writing is strikingly poetic and… show more.

Meanwhile, in the American Southwest we have the Great House civilization of the “Anasazi” -- more correctly, the Ancestral Puebloan people -- renowned for creating Chaco Canyon and many other great cultural centers. (Chaco and its inhabitants figure strongly in my third book, Eagle and Empire.) Craig Childs’ book makes this area, and its peoples, and the sheer extent of their civilization, come alive. It’s a beautiful and evocative work of archeological detective work and exploration.