An evocative, narrative history, Arid Empire by Natalie Koch demonstrates that the exchange of colonial technologies between the Arabian Peninsula and United States over the past two centuries—from date palm farming and desert agriculture to the utopian sci-fi dreams of Biosphere 2 and Frank Herbert’s Dune—bound the two regions together, first solidifying the colonization of the US West and, eventually, the reach of American power into the Middle East.

Arid Empire teaches us to see deserts anew, not as mythic sites of romance or empty wastelands but as an “arid empire,” a crucial political space where imperial dreams coalesce.