The Arid Lands: History, Power, Knowledge (The MIT Press, 2016), by Diana Davis, associate professor of history. Deserts are commonly imagined as barren, defiled, worthless places, wastelands in need of development. This book examines their environmental history to expose the myths and demonstrate the diversity of the world's drylands. 

Diana Davis is a geographer and veterinarian who specializes in geography, environmental history and political ecology with a special emphasis on the arid lands of the globe. She is a professor in the History Department and Chair of the Geography Graduate Group. Her research focuses on topics such as Political Ecology, Environmental History, Pastoral Societies and Arid Lands, Colonialism/Imperialism, Medical Geography, Environmental Change and Public Health, Ethnoveterinary Medicine, and the Middle East and North Africa. 

View the book at MIT Press