Gallery : BORDERLINE REALITY

Peter Steinhart writes of it this way: “This is a land of glimpses. Of the bobcat that darts across the road, the coyote that slinks behind the cactus. . . . To see in this landscape, you have to think differently.”

That land lies along the U.S.-Mexico border. Steinhart and photographer Tupper Ansel Blake spent two years exploring the Gulf of Mexico and Gulf of California areas and produced the new book, “Two Eagles/Dos Aguilas” (University of California Press).

But coffee-table beauty isn’t the point. The book’s mission is to stem the abuse of the region by both countries. At risk are the rich wildlife and landscape; the desert millipede, the red-tailed hawk and fluttering two-tail swallowtails, the Maritime marshland and the bug-eyed couch spadefoot.