Review by the Tucson Weekly on December 22.

I walked past the Occupy Tucson camp the other day and stopped for while to watch a hacky-sack game. I read a few of the cardboard slogans, talked to a guy with booze on his breath, and left wishing that I could buy the group a few copies of Andrew Ross’ new book to pass around.

Invited to train his sharp, critical eye on the Sonoran Desert’s megalopolis by Arizona State University’s Future Arts Research program, Ross, a professor of social and cultural analysis at New York University, interviewed some 200 Phoenicians during his stay, including urban gardeners, environmental-justice activists, academics working on the sharp edge of green technology and theory, and a few of the Arizona Legislature’s global-warming deniers.

The resulting book, Bird on Fire: Lessons From the World’s Least Sustainable City, is terrifying, maddening, depressing and hopeful all at once. Kind of like Phoenix itself.

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