This is the only modern natural history of the Mojave, which makes it the standard by default, but it’s also thorough, engaging, and well-written. There’s the geology and how the basins and ranges got there, climate and why so little rain arrives, soils and desert pavement and cryptobiotic crust, the plants from creosote clones thousands of years old to the Joshua tree, the animals and how each solves water, then the human history and the current pressures — grazing, off-road use, solar development, invasive grasses feeding fires the desert never evolved with.
A Natural History of the Mojave Desert