Edward Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975) is set largely in the desert Southwest and captures the spirit of the Colorado River country that Yuma sits within. Abbey's desert anarchists haunt a landscape of canyon lands, dam infrastructure, and red rock — the same world you see from the Territorial Prison bluff.
Sam Quinones's Dreamland (2015) traces the opioid epidemic through border communities including the Arizona-Mexico borderlands. Yuma sits right at that crossing, and the book gives context to the complex social realities of the region in a way no guidebook can.
Francisco Cantú's The Line Becomes a River (2018) is a memoir by a former US Border Patrol agent who worked the desert borderlands of Arizona. It's a thoughtful, honest account of life on the line — particularly relevant for anyone curious about the border that runs just south of Yuma.