"The author Writes authoritatively and is a clear advocate for both the reshaping of cities and the new values that he feels will recreate and sustain them."---Richard Francavigita, author of Mapping and Imagination in the Great Basin Few other places in the United States are as high, dry, sparsely inhabited---and urbanized---as the Great Basin of the Utah and Nevada. The great majority of the population of this rapidly growing region lives in the two metropotitan areas at its edges, Salt Lake City and the Wasatch Front, and Reno and the Truckee Meadows. These cities embody the allure and the challenge of the contemporary American West, deemed by some "The New American Heartland." In this highly readable book of creative nonfiction, Sullivan employs a Variety of methods---including interviews, research, travelogues, and narrative---to survey the harsh landscape for clues to the ways cities can adapt to their geography, topography, ecology, hydrography, history, and culture. No Communication with the Sea embarks on a quest for a livable future for the heart of the interior West, In the process, it both unearths the past and ponders the present and future Great Basin cities.