About this item
"If Thoreau drank more whiskey and lived in the desert, he'd write like this." - High Country News Welcome to the land of wildfire, hypothermia, desiccation, and rattlers. The stark and inhospitable high-elevation landscape of Nevada's Great Basin Desert may not be an obvious (or easy) place to settle down, but for self-professed desert rat Michael Branch, it's home. Of course, living in such an unforgiving landscape gives one many things to rant about. Fortunately for us, Branch - humorist, environmentalist, and author of Raising Wild - is a prodigious ranter. From bees hiving in the walls of his house to owls trying to eat his daughters' cat - not to mention his eccentric neighbors - adventure, humor, and irreverence abound on Branch's small slice of the world, which he lovingly calls Ranting Hill.
About the Author
Michael P. Branch is a writer of creative nonfiction, a humorist, a desert rat, a husband, and the father of two daughters. He has published seven books and more than 200 essays and reviews, and has given more than 250 public readings and invited lectures. His creative nonfiction includes pieces that have received Honorable Mention for the Pushcart Prize and been recognized as Notable Essays in The Best American Essays (three times) , The Best American Science and Nature Writing, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading (a humor anthology) . His creative work has appeared in magazines including Utne Reader, Orion, Slate, Ecotone, Terrain.org, High Country News, Places, Whole Terrain, and Red Rock Review. His most recent book, Raising Wild: Dispatches from a Home in the Wilderness, came out in August, 2016. His new book, Rants from the Hill: On Packrats, Bobcats, Wildfires, Curmudgeons, a Drunken Mary Kay Lady, and Other Encounters with the Wild in the High Desert, will be released in June, 2017. Both books are published by Shambhala / Roost Books and distributed by Penguin Random House. Mike lives with his wife Eryn and daughters Hannah Virginia and Caroline Emerson in a passive solar home of their own design at 6,000 feet in the remote high desert of northwestern Nevada, where the Great Basin Desert and the Sierra Nevada Mountains meet.
