Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape

A dictionary of American landscape words, written by forty-five writers instead of lexicographers. Barry Lopez and Debra Gwartney handed out the terms and let each writer define them — so Barbara Kingsolver gets some, Antonya Nelson, William Kittredge, Luis Alberto Urrea, Jon Krakauer. About nine hundred words in all: Cirque, playa, hoodoo, bayou, kipuka, bench, draw, riffle, blowout, oxbow, arroyo, tinaja. Each entry gives the meaning and then where the word came from and who uses it, so you get Spanish, French, Dutch, and Native terms all sitting in the same American mouth. Read three pages and the country outside the window gets more specific.