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Yuck: The Birth & Death of the Weird & Wondrous Joshua Tree, Yucca brevifolia
“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.
“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)
—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.
“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)
- GenresNonfictionNature
130 pages, Paperback
Published March 25, 2025
About the author
Barret Baumgart
3 books11 followersWEIRD NONFICTION
❝🇨🇭🇮🇳🇦 🇱🇦🇰🇪 🇮🇸 🇦🇳 🇦🇵🇴🇨🇦🇱🇾🇵🇸🇪 🇴🇫 🇹🇭🇪 🇼🇪🇮🇷🇩❝ --🇷🇮🇨🇭🇦🇷🇩 🇵🇷🇪🇸🇹🇴🇳
“ʏᴜᴄᴋ ᴄᴏɴꜰɪʀᴍꜱ ʙᴀᴜᴍɢᴀʀᴛ’ꜱ ꜱᴛᴀᴛᴜꜱ ᴀꜱ ᴏɴᴇ ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴇ ʟᴇᴀᴅɪɴɢ ᴄʜʀᴏɴɪᴄʟᴇʀꜱ ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴇ ᴄᴀʟɪꜰᴏʀɴɪᴀ ᴡᴇɪʀᴅ.” --ᴇʀɪᴋ ᴅᴀᴠɪꜱ
Barret Baumgart is an essayist, screenwriter, and the author of the nonfiction books China Lake and YUCK. His essays have appeared in The Paris Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Iowa Review, The Rumpus, Vice, LitHub, The Seneca Review, and The Literary Review, among others. He lives in Los Angeles.
❝🇨🇭🇮🇳🇦 🇱🇦🇰🇪 🇮🇸 🇦🇳 🇦🇵🇴🇨🇦🇱🇾🇵🇸🇪 🇴🇫 🇹🇭🇪 🇼🇪🇮🇷🇩❝ --🇷🇮🇨🇭🇦🇷🇩 🇵🇷🇪🇸🇹🇴🇳
“ʏᴜᴄᴋ ᴄᴏɴꜰɪʀᴍꜱ ʙᴀᴜᴍɢᴀʀᴛ’ꜱ ꜱᴛᴀᴛᴜꜱ ᴀꜱ ᴏɴᴇ ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴇ ʟᴇᴀᴅɪɴɢ ᴄʜʀᴏɴɪᴄʟᴇʀꜱ ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴇ ᴄᴀʟɪꜰᴏʀɴɪᴀ ᴡᴇɪʀᴅ.” --ᴇʀɪᴋ ᴅᴀᴠɪꜱ
Barret Baumgart is an essayist, screenwriter, and the author of the nonfiction books China Lake and YUCK. His essays have appeared in The Paris Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Iowa Review, The Rumpus, Vice, LitHub, The Seneca Review, and The Literary Review, among others. He lives in Los Angeles.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
June 20, 2025
The Joshua Tree is kind of like the Giving Tree. Except it doesn’t give you anything but an existential crisis. A plant that has survived decades of literary libel, endless real estate expansion and a failed paper experiment is now in a real crisis caused by… having too many fans? Were the hipsters right all along?
This book is a wonderful meditation on the desert, Southern California, and ultimately climate. The land is free; it’s the climate we’re selling. The climate that was rapaciously marketed to attract settlers to this land now begins to show the wear and tear of said settlers, and the Joshua Tree stands as a litmus test to it all.
Barret, you nailed it. Thank you for this book.
This book is a wonderful meditation on the desert, Southern California, and ultimately climate. The land is free; it’s the climate we’re selling. The climate that was rapaciously marketed to attract settlers to this land now begins to show the wear and tear of said settlers, and the Joshua Tree stands as a litmus test to it all.
Barret, you nailed it. Thank you for this book.
June 17, 2025
This book is a real treat. Written by someone who obviously loves the California desert and the Joshua Tree area and history. An homage to the desert, and to the tree that gives the area it's name. Part personal journal, part science lesson, part poetry, part history book. I loved it all, just like I love the desert area that keeps calling me back to it over and over again. Baumgart captures the spirit of the desert and Joshua Tree very well. He also laments that much of it is fading away quickly due to tourism and climate change. Highly recommended.
October 9, 2025
interesting, passionate, lyrical, prone to cherry-picking and great exaggeration to make a literary point, disturbingly absent of Indigenous history and presence ("Native Americans dyed baskets from the root fibers for thousands of years...then they passed on and the knowledge did with them"), at times insightful, at other times self-indulgent.
April 18, 2025
Barret Baumgart has created a page turning historical nonfiction that provides a web of haunting and uncanny connections between historical facts and commentary which build to a climax of revelations. Both the tree and the town of Joshua Tree, visited by over 3 million people a year, have a new meaning, page after page and quote after quote. For me, this book was exceptionally engaging from start to finish. It has made me take on a significantly more in depth understanding of the history and various cultural perspectives of this special place. I have been coming to Joshua Tree to camp, climb, star gaze and simply be present in this other worldly environment for many years. This book, under the direction of Barret's cynical, comical, absurd, profound and truly (truly, truly) weird historical perspective, has given me a new appreciation for this harsh and beautiful desert landscape. When I finished reading this book, I just wanted more. Barret is a unique author, who is not afraid to explore ideas which may not be popular, or mainstream, but make sense when you read his work as if these are pieces of a puzzle and Barret brings them together so we can see the whole (WEIRD and haunting) picture. GREAT READ!
September 5, 2025
Having spent the past half decade chasing remote Joshua tree groves across BLM lands, I was thrilled to discover that essayist Barret Baumgart had written an entire book about them.
Yuck is a wacky ride through the trials, tribulations, and perilous future of the ancient Yucca brevifolia. The book reveals the tree’s unlikely rise from desert oddity to cultural icon, its deep entanglement with the building of Los Angeles, and its improbable survival despite centuries of scorn and repeated attempts at erasure — all while making me laugh enough to feel like I was on a tumultuous joyride down an avenue called Probable Extinction.
Yuck is a wacky ride through the trials, tribulations, and perilous future of the ancient Yucca brevifolia. The book reveals the tree’s unlikely rise from desert oddity to cultural icon, its deep entanglement with the building of Los Angeles, and its improbable survival despite centuries of scorn and repeated attempts at erasure — all while making me laugh enough to feel like I was on a tumultuous joyride down an avenue called Probable Extinction.
May 26, 2025
What struck me most as I read Yuck was the INSANE level of detailed research the author put into finding hundreds of references to the Yucca tree from such a wide variety of sources. I love how these quotes are woven into the fabric of the story of this weirdly beautiful tree that has caused such a wide range of emotional responses from its viewers (and non-viewers alike). The presentation of these sources and the story that continues to unfold around these trees is truly fascinating and equally mysterious.
A great read for sure!
A great read for sure!
January 4, 2026
A decent literary introduction to the Joshua Tree and it's relationship with Los Angelians and Americans over the past 150 years or so.
The prose was beautifully written and waxed lyrical to create an enchanting and captivating picture. Baumgart does share this was a short project for his wedding that was going to introduce he and his partner's love of the Mojave Desert and the grotesque Joshua "Yucca" Tree. it does serve that purpose well. I wish there was more information about the history of the tree, the park, and the relationships with people.
The prose was beautifully written and waxed lyrical to create an enchanting and captivating picture. Baumgart does share this was a short project for his wedding that was going to introduce he and his partner's love of the Mojave Desert and the grotesque Joshua "Yucca" Tree. it does serve that purpose well. I wish there was more information about the history of the tree, the park, and the relationships with people.
April 10, 2025
Yuck is more than just the history of a grotesque tree named Josh. Barret explores more than just the evolving history of Yucca brevifolia from the most hated tree to one that is now loved and endures. He explores what it means for us to exist as humans in relation to this grotesque tree and the magical California dessert.
April 22, 2025
bought this book in joshua tree and it was a perfect read for my visit and as a through & through californian <3
January 1, 2026
A great book to learn about the Joshua Tree. Not traditionally written, but fun to read!
July 31, 2025
picked this one up in joshua tree a few weeks ago and read it all in a single cowboy tub session in the dead of summer. it’s an excellent read on the joshua tree’s rise in status and perception—it was first viewed as a plant from hell and now it’s the main attraction of the mojave. i was unaware of a lot info shared in this book, as i’m just a mojave desert enthusiast who has made the trip annually for the last five years, but what really shocked me was JUST how quickly we could lose joshua trees and it made me real bummed. but appreciative i’ve spent the time i have out there, usually alone, contemplating desert life and my life and life in general and life beyond.
March 28, 2025
Nobody writes about the scorched interior of California like Barret Baumgart. This book isn't just about yucca plants, it's about America, humanity and the future. He's the Weird Barry Lopez of our time.
April 28, 2025
I just finished Yuck. Funny and interesting and eye opening and thought provoking and, yes, depressing. But funny.
As a native Californian (sixth generation SoCal, as a matter of fact), who has visited Joshua Tree a few times, I really appreciated reading about a part of my state's history that I knew nothing about.
I'll admit that my first visit was in 2018, for a yoga retreat 🫣🤫, all caught up in magic of Joshua Tree. I feel a little silly about that now, but am really glad that I did get to see the beauty of the park and the yucky trees.
I'll never look at a "disgusting" Yucca brevifolia
same way again! Thank you for this, Mr Baumgart.
As a native Californian (sixth generation SoCal, as a matter of fact), who has visited Joshua Tree a few times, I really appreciated reading about a part of my state's history that I knew nothing about.
I'll admit that my first visit was in 2018, for a yoga retreat 🫣🤫, all caught up in magic of Joshua Tree. I feel a little silly about that now, but am really glad that I did get to see the beauty of the park and the yucky trees.
I'll never look at a "disgusting" Yucca brevifolia
same way again! Thank you for this, Mr Baumgart.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews