Boondoggle in the desert.

As the fascinating, quirky 2004 documentary Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea (not to be confused with the 2002 Val Kilmer thriller The Salton Sea) makes abundantly clear, America has made a terrible mess in the southern California desert. Created by an engineering accident in 1905, when Colorado River levees broke and spilled into a depression 280 feet below sea level, the 380-squaremile Salton Sea is a mind-boggling mix of contradictions. It is teeming with imported fish, yet suffers mass wildlife die-offs and farm waste loading. It once supported a booming tourism industry, but is now largely deserted except for a few eccentric residents. Some environmentalists want to see it returned to its desert past, while others argue that is must be preserved since it now hosts legions of the plants and animals that have been pushed out of their historic California homes by human activities.

Covering much of the same ground that Chris Metzler and Jeff Springer visited in Plagues, Greetings from the Salton Sea: Folly and Intervention in the Southern California Landscape, 1905-2005 (Center for American Places, $25) by Kim Stringfellow takes a thoughtful look at the body of water that shouldn't be. The striking, smartly designed book is full of vibrant photos that will help transport readers to this otherworldly place, where rust-stained marshes, boarded-up hotels and mounds of rotting fish and algae bare witness to humankind's folly.