The iconic deserts of the American southwest could not have been colonized and settled without
the help of desert experts from the Middle East. For example: In 1856 a caravan of
thirty-three camels arrived in Indianola Texas led by a Syrian cameleer the Americans called
Hi Jolly. This camel corps the US government hoped could help the army secure the new
southwest swath of the country just wrested from Mexico. Though the dream of the camel corps -
and sadly the camels - died the idea of drawing on expertise knowledge and practices from
the desert countries of the Middle East did not. As Natalie Koch demonstrates in this evocative
narrative history the exchange of colonial technologies between the Arabian Peninsula and
United States over the past two centuries - from date palm farming and desert agriculture to
the utopian sci-fi dreams of Biosphere 2 and Frank Herbert's Dune - bound the two regions
together solidifying the colonization of the US West and eventually the reach of American
power into the Middle East. Koch teaches us to see deserts anew not as mythic sites of romance
or empty wastelands but as an arid empire a crucial political space where imperial dreams
coalesce.
