Desert Solitaire. There are precious few books that I can honestly say have changed me, that have affected me in such a fundmental way as to have tangible effects on my being, my thought processes, even years later. Conversations with God? Perhaps. Twain's Roughing It? You bet. But how different would I be today, as a person, had my father not given me that well-thumbed paperback copy of Desert Solitaire in my early teens.