Sand, Water, Salt : Texas Tech University Press : 9781682830819 : 1682830810 : 30 Aug 2021 : Jada Ach's scholarship in Sand, Water, Salt: Managing the Elements in Literature of the American West, 1880-1925 seeks to reevaluate the Progressive Era's environmental legacy. Taking an ecocritical approach to turn-of-the-century literature set in the American West, Ach interrogates texts by asking what kinds of environmental, national, and cultural stories the elements have to tell about land and oceanic management. Sand, Water, Salt investigates managerial engagements with dynamic ecologies in three particular Western environments: the arid deserts, the semiarid high plains, and the Pacific Ocean. At different times, and to varying degrees, Americans have deemed these environments economically unproductive, incompatible with Anglo-American settlement, and/or highly unmanageable. Despite these varied complaints, the United States has also intensely desired these "wasteland" spaces, perceivin