I don't do book reviews on this blog, but I'm making an exception for Tom Zoellner's superb Rim to River: Looking into the Heart of Arizona.
It deserves space on your Arizona history shelf along with Thomas Sheridan's Arizona: A History, Philip VanderMeer's Desert Visions and the Making of Phoenix, William Collins' The Emerging Metropolis: Phoenix: 1944-1973, Marshall Trimble and Jack August's works, and, I hope, my Brief History of Phoenix.
The book has urgency because Arizona matters more than ever. It holds 7.2 million people, compared with the mere 1 million when I was born. It's the third most populous state in the West behind California and Washington, and Phoenix is the fifth most populous city in the nation. Facing a historic drought, state leaders are unwilling to stop the second-biggest driver of the problem: Sprawl. The biggest, climate change, is sure to bring rough justice to the Grand Canyon State. The politics are as extreme as the weather.