Includes bibliographical references (p. 461-482) and index.

The flood : Chaco Canyon -- Alignment : Fajada Butte and Casa Rinconada -- Identity : Pueblo Bonito -- Looking north : Pueblo Alto -- Visibility : the Great North Road -- Decline : Kutz Canyon -- Crossing to the other side : The Totah -- Continuity : Aztec -- Moon watchers : Chimney Rock -- Memory : Southwest Colorado -- Movement : Northern San Juan Basin -- The art of leaving : Great Sage Plain -- Protection : Mesa Verde -- Devastation : Below Sleeping Ute -- Lonelienss : Near Hovenweep -- Escape terrain : Canyonlands -- Red : The head of Comb Ridge -- The Great Wall : Comb Ridge -- Walking the line : Chinle Wash -- Retreat : Near Monument Valley -- The last cliff dwellings of the Anasazi : Mesas of Kayenta -- The Great Pueblos : Antelope Mesa -- The choice : Painted Desert -- Outpost : Little Colorado River -- The clock : At the edge of the forest -- Watchtower : Mogollon Rim -- Building large : Along the Mogollon Rim -- Salado : Below the Mogollon Rim -- The Highland Pueblos : Kinishba and Grasshopper -- Land's End : Point of Pines -- Flowers along the way : Bonita Creek -- Crossroads : Safford -- Mountain of shrines : The Pinalenos -- The far side of Mesoamerica : Sierra San Luis -- The city : Paquime -- Coming into the mountains : Slope of the Sierra Madre -- The Eye of Tlaloc : Sierra Madre occidental -- Putting back the bones : Farther into the Sierra Madre -- The story the Conquistadors told : At the western foot of the Sierra Madre.

The greatest unsolved mystery of the American Southwest is the fate of the Anasazi, the native peoples who in the eleventh century converged on Chaco Canyon (in today's northwestern New Mexico) and built a flourishing cultural center that attracted pilgrims from far and wide, a vital crossroads of the prehistoric world. The Anasazis' accomplishments--in agriculture, art, commerce, architecture, and engineering--were astounding, as remarkable in their way as those of Mayans in distant Central America. By the thirteenth century, however, the Anasazi were gone from the region. What brought about the rapid collapse of their civilization? Was it drought? pestilence? war? Naturalist Childs draws on the latest scholarly research, as well as on a lifetime of adventure and exploration in the most forbidding landscapes of the American Southwest , to shed new light on this compelling mystery.--From publisher description.

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