“YUCK confirms Baumgart’s status as one of the leading chroniclers of the California weird.”

—Erik Davis, author of High Weirdness (MIT Press, 2019) and Blotter (MIT, 2025)

“Wonderful… irreverent… fun...”

—Chris Clarke, host 90 Miles from Needles, Environmental Editor PBS SoCal

“An uncomfortable yet entertaining meditation… in the tradition of both Robinson Jeffers and Mike Davis.”

—A.S. Hamrah, author of the The Earth Dies Streaming (N+1 Books)

Winner of the 2023 Wandering Aengus Book Award for Creative Nonfiction. Available March 25, 2025.

PAST EVENTS

RADIO INTERVIEW | Z107.7 FM in Joshua Tree | LISTEN HERE

INTERVIEW w/ the Desert Conservation Podcast, 90 MILES FROM NEEDLES 

PLANTSTOCK 2025 | FEATURED AUTHOR | MAY 24

BOOK RELEASE & FUND-RAISER for MDLT @ ANGEL CITY BREWERY |  WATCH VIDEO

READING, Q&A | HI DESERT TIMES IN 29 PALMS

SPACE COWBOY BOOKS, Joshua Tree | LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW HERE

INTERVIEW | LIVING THE NEXT CHAPTER PODCAST

INTERVIEW | Visiting Mr. V PODCAST

LIVE Q&A | JOSHUA TREES the SHOW

“YUCK is a prismatic collage, a poetic wandering, a compact history of the West as twisted and weird and ominous and beautiful as the plant it obsesses over. From divine providence to gaseous landfill to Instagram paradise, YUCK deftly traces the modern history of a small patch of desert to leave us with a big warning about America’s demented relationship with the land. Baumgart’s brief book will turn your Joshua Tree vacation into a terrifying revelation and so should be required reading at the gates of the national park.”

—Joshua Wheeler, author of Acid West (FSG, 2018) and The High Heaven (Graywolf, 2025)

“Barret Baumgart’s appropriately tangled and marvelous ode to the Joshua tree—part poetry, part cultural history, part confrontation with a Mojave mystery—deftly honors one of the Southwest’s most compelling and symbolically rich inhabitants. It also confirms Baumgart’s status as one of the leading chroniclers of the California weird.”

—Erik Davis, author of The Visionary State (Chronicle Books, 2006) and High Weirdness.

“I was prepared to be upset by YUCK. Unfortunately it’s wonderful. Very much like some of the hikes that I took in Joshua Tree forests with no map and insufficient supplies when I first moved out to the desert. The whole field of nature writing has really been tarred with a sort of excessive reverence for the natural world. YUCK does none of that. It’s not disrespectful of the natural world, but there’s an irreverence to the approach, which is really fun. And, in fact, I learned something…”

—Chris Clarke, host of 90 Miles From Needles, Environmental Editor PBS SoCal

“Barret Baumgart’s YUCK is part tract or pamphlet, part prose poem, an uncomfortable yet entertaining meditation on California and nature in the tradition of both Robinson Jeffers and Mike Davis. Anyone who has visited the Joshua Trees in the Mojave Desert, anyone who lives in the Golden State or in the West, will want to read this natural history of yucca trees—with their grotesque arms like monsters in pain . . . stranded in tortured frenzy—that is also a brief unnatural history of what we have done to the place where they grow.” 

—A. S. Hamrah, author of The Earth Dies Streaming: Film Writing, 2002-2018 (N +1 Books, 2018)

“Baumgart’s ecstatic prose turns the Joshua Tree into a mind-expanding mirror. Through the prism of modern man’s encounter with this singular, surreal tree, Barret Baumgart’s YUCK illuminates the history of southern California and the carnival of human wastefulness and desire for transcendence that has fueled the evolution of the region from arid desert to epicenter of global consumption. YUCK is an unforgettable read that pulls you along with its propulsive, poetic language, and leaves you with a wide sobering view of the land and our all-too-human relation to it.”

—Jesús Castillo, author of Two Murals (The Song Cave, 2021) and Remains (McSweeny’s, 2016)

“Against the grain of the buzz-saw and business of famous Joshua Tree—once a sparsely populated stopping place in the Mojave Desert—Barret Baumgart’s fascinating YUCK offers the human-like trees, arms raised, as a metaphor for the overconsumption of the American West. Like desert winds combing through creosote and Yucca brevifolia, YUCK’s ingenious approach to the stinky yet iconic desert tree shapes the archival into the lyrical, inviting readers into a captivating and urgent contemplation of the ecology, capitalism, and history of Los Angeles. In YUCK, with“the whispered cough of a word, uncouth in sound—yucca, yucca”, Baumgart offers a story of climate disaster and climate tourism, inviting us to encounter the Joshua tree as an elegiac symbol and warning.”

—Tyler Mills, author of The Bomb Cloud (Unbound Edition Press, 2024) and Hawk Parable (University of Akron Press, 2019) 

Praise for China Lake (2017), named a best book of the year by Kirkus and Brooklyn Rail:

“An apocalypse of the weird. A brilliant, often hilarious, and thoroughly original work of nonfiction.” —Richard Preston

“Nearly indescribable and utterly engrossing… this book is an urgent and terrifying cultural reflection, a startling look in the mirror.” —Kirkus, starred review