NPR’s Most Anticipated Books of The Summer Features Water in the Desert: A Pilgrimage by Gary Paul Nabhan
Read The Full Article: https://www.npr.org/2026/05/19/nx-s1-5800893/new-summer-books-2026
“I love books that explore nature through a sociocultural lens. Lebanese American Gary Paul Nabhan’s new book traces the story of his unusual life. Nabhan grew up along Lake Michigan’s southern dunes and was negatively singled out as a student with “disabilities.” He found his path through ecology, poetry, travel, studying Indigenous Mexican communities, becoming an Ecumenical Franciscan brother and exploring his own ancestry — all of which shape his view that Earth is “the original scripture.” An ethnobotanist, Nabhan was awarded a MacArthur “genius grant” for “insights into the relationship between culture and land.” I can’t wait to read this book. (June 2) — Martha Anne Toll
Dr. Gary Paul Nabhan is a Lebanese-American plant explorer, literary naturalist, desert scientist, and biocultural restoration ecologist. Over a half century, his field work and communuty engagement with diverse cultures has spanned ten deserts on four continents. His rich and varied work is unified around three themes, the interactions among plants, animals and traditional land-based cultures; the conservation of biodiversity in deserts and seas, and the need for multicultural and interfaith collaborations to safeguard sacred plants and sacred springs. Nabhan accomplishes their work by building long-term relationships between unlikely partners who walk into “the radical center,” a place where shared values unites rather than divides us.
For this work, Nabhan has been called a “world visionary” by the Utne Reader, the “lyrical poet of biodiversity” by Mother Jones, and the “father of the Local Food Movement” by Time magazine. He has been honored with a McArthur “genius” award, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a Laureate for global contributions by Arab-Americans by the Takreem Foundation, and several lifetime achievement awards by conservation, science and sustainable food and agriculture organizations.
His thirty-six books and hundreds of journal and magazine articles have been honored with a John Burroughs Medal for Nature Writing, a James Beard Medal, a Vavilov Medal, a Western State Book Award and a Premio Gaia from Sicily. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Nature and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, NPR Morning Edition, Science Friday and Splendid Table, and in a Sundance Film Award-winning short documentary which he narrates, Man in the Maze. In addition to his research and writing, Nabhan is an Ecumenical Franciscan Brother and orchardist who grows 120 kinds of desert-adapted perennial crops.
