Titled “Desert America: Politics and Contemplation on the Mythic American Landscape,” Martínez’s presentation is free, but tickets are required and are available at bit.ly/bates-otis13. A reception and book signing take place in the Olin Arts Center lobby immediately following the lecture.

Published in 2012 by Metropolitan Books, “Desert America” weaves Martínez’s own experiences and careful reporting together into stories that evoke a new world of extremes: outrageous wealth and devastating poverty, sublime beauty and ecological ruin.

“The essential theme is the brutality of capitalism in the desert West,” Martínez told the Santa Fe Reporter in 2012. “There’s an extreme form of capitalism in the West––extremes of wealth and extremes of poverty.”

Martínez was inspired to start “Desert America” in the late 1990s as personal problems drove him to seek a kind of refuge in California’s Joshua Tree Desert. Past deadline on a book project, “I was broke and doing a lot of drugs,” he told the Santa Fe newspaper.

“I began a period of 10 years living in the borderlands,” from California to New Mexico to Texas, and elsewhere. “The book begins with me trying to get my life back together and trying to live in these other settings, and noticing I wasn’t the only one in trouble in that landscape.”

Martínez’s work broadly explores the lives of immigrants and the impacts of globalization, and his narratives emphasize human relationships.

For more information, call 207-786-6163.

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