Assuming that the Sonoran Desert has a homogeneous physical environment, Roger Dunbier attempts to contrast the disparate social and economic development of its Mexican and United States portions. The boundaries which he uses to delimit the desert are based for the most part on the vegetation map in Forrest Shreve’s Vegetation of the Sonoran Desert (Washington, 1951), but have been inconsistently extended to include the coastal region of southern Sonora and northern Sinaloa. In the initial chapters of the book the author covers the physical geography in the traditional fashion of systematic regional studies. The remaining chapters are devoted to tracing the social and economic development of the Sonoran Desert from the early Spanish entradas to the present, with particular emphasis on the geographical importance of the United States-Mexico boundary and on the development of water resources.
Though Dunbier’s effort to contrast the disparate social and economic development in the two parts of the Sonoran Desert is commendable, the book lacks thorough research, and numerous errors and omissions pervade it. Many of the chapters, especially those on the physical geography, do not adequately cover the area within the Sonoran Desert as Dunbier has defined it. (For example, the chapter on land forms does not include a description of the coastal plain from the Yaqui River south or a description of the Colorado Delta.) Also the chapter on climate does not discuss hurricanes and their effects on southern Sonora or Sinaloa. In general, the maps are unsatisfactory ; and the dot maps in particular defy standard cartographic techniques. The maps also contradict information in the text and furnish misinformation. (For example, the rainfall data on pp. 264 and 395 contradict the isohyet map on p. 19. Despite the information mapped on p. 122, the mission frontier had advanced north of the mouth of the Yaqui River prior to 1620.) Furthermore, much of the material on Mexican land tenure is erroneous (e.g., the author lists 1204 ejidos for all of Mexico when there are actually over 18,000).
Many of the pictures are the same ones used in Six Faces of Mexico by Russell Ewing, et. al. In fact, one picture showing the loading of cotton bales in the Mexicali district appears in Six Faces of Mexico with a caption denoting the loading of cotton grown in Sinaloa.
The book reads well and is an unusual regional synthesis of the Sonoran Desert. The objective was clearly worthwhile, but the countless errors and omissions which plague this work derogate what might have been a valuable contribution to the body of knowledge on the Sonoran Desert.