“Symbols of the divine show up in our world initially at the trash stratum.” —Philip K. Dick
I write weird, investigative literary nonfiction rooted in L.A. & the Mojave Desert.
My new book YUCK drops 3/25/25
“Yuck confirms Baumgart’s status as one of the leading chroniclers of the California weird.”
—Erik Davis, author of High Weirdness (MIT Press, 2019)
“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)
To learn more visit barretbaumgart.com
My first book CHINA LAKE was named one of the best nonfiction books of 2017 by Kirkus and Brooklyn Rail.
“China Lake is an apocalypse of the weird. A brilliant, often hilarious, and thoroughly original work of nonfiction.”
—Richard Preston, best-selling author of The Hot Zone
I created the DUMPSTER FIRES in February 2023 to provide an 𝑒𝓍𝒸𝒾𝓉𝒾𝓃𝑔, 𝕟𝕖𝕨 window onto the utterly calamitous and mismanaged situation that is my life. And more specifically…
The disaster of my current book project
And more importantly… THE ALLEY outside my window.
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“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.”
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