New Mexico Books

Mike Butterfield's Guide to the Mountains of New Mexico is a rapturous photographic showcase of the natural beauty of New Mexico. Full-color images on almost every other page capture the rainbow hues of the desert, the tenacity of local flora, the glory of sunrise and sunset and the pristine powder of winter snow. Hiker, backpacker, and aspiring naturalist Peter Greene provides text filled with information about the formation of major ranges as well as their recreational opportunities, ecology, true tales of exploration, and pieces of lore. Multiple maps, including a separate fold-out map showing ranges in photographic relief, as well as detailed peak and wilderness lists round out this wondrous guide for armchair travelers and inspiration for outdoor enthusiasts contemplating a New Mexico visit.

As a New Mexcio native I have seen and owned a number of books about the mountains of the State. This book is well organized and laid out and it invites you to take time and learn about all the various mountain ranges available to us in NM. The photography is first class and inspiring in the their own right. I particularly like the organization and format of the book. The size is just right and the information is presented in a way that is fun and just enough to answer all the main questsions without going into an overload of detail. A high quality folded two sided map is included in a back pocket and the map augments the information inside the book. This is a great gift fo people who appreciate the wonders on NM and want to to learn and explore more. Mike Butterfield and Peter Greene have done a great job with the book. Five stars are not enough.

this book let me understand a little bit more about this fenomena...
and is kind of rare to find this subject, but is incredible all this devotion
truh this little images.

This book gives a very thorough history of Milagros. It is also filled with a variety of different examples.

Millie was an ancestor of mine and the story is as factual as any of the family histories have led us to believe. She was a brave child, but true to the heritage of the times. Great book for children, teens, or anyone that may want a brief history of Central Missouri in early times of settlement.

This War of 1812 story about the Missouri frontier might offer an interesting stimulus for studying history, talking about courage, examining the differences of times, and teaching Missouri history. The British and Indian nations attack Fort Cooper, where Millie and other families are staying. Twelve-year old Millie ride to Fort Hempstead to find help. Students should enjoy and learn from this reality-based, interesting story, with hand-drawn pictures.

This is classic Mibres at its best. If you don't have this one in your library - WHY NOT?!

This book is hard to find in libraries but is an excellent resource. Excellent photographs of bowls and clear description of styles and meaning makes the book invaluable. We use it in our class.

Few students of literature today have heard of Neith Boyce. But at the dawn of the 20th century, she achieved significant success as a prolific writer of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and drama, in what was distinctly a man's world. In that world she was known as Mrs. Hutchins Hapgood, and at the time Hapgood‚s career eclipsed hers, though he's equally obscure today. Carol DeBoer-Langworthy, editor of The Modern World of Neith Boyce, has resurrected the previously unpublished autobiographical portion of Boyce's oeuvre in a thorough, scholarly presentation.

The three works contained in this volume are an autobiography by Boyce that covers her early years and ends with her marriage to Hapgood; diary entrees from an extended stay in Italy in 1903, during which Boyce rubbed sleeves with such luminaries as Bernard Berenson and Gertrude Stein; and diary entries from 1914, when Boyce, two of her children, Mabel Dodge, and Carl Van Vechten were stranded in Italy at the outbreak of World War I.

Editor DeBoer-Langworthy contributes an introduction with a biographical sketch of Boyce's life that cogently establishes Boyce's place at the forefront of the modernist movement, but left me wanting a bit more detail, such as excerpts or sample plot summaries from Boyce's fictional works. So I wonder if a complete Neith Boyce biography might be the editor's next project. As it is, DeBoer-Langworthy played detective over a twenty-five year span in pursuit of the unvarnished Neith Boyce, and the book's parallel streams reflect its editor's total engagement. There is Boyce's narrative, and there is the narrative of DeBoer-Langworthy's footnotes. The editor's tidbits of historical context and personal anecdote are not to be missed.

In her autobiography Neith Boyce did not make a literary detective's work easier. Apparently traumatized by the early childhood loss of her four siblings to a diphtheria epidemic, which left her temporarily an only child, Boyce took refuge in detachment and invented an alter-ego, whom she called "You" and blamed for all her real or imagined social blunders. This penchant for seeing herself in other than the first person persisted in her autobiography, where she assumes the third person identity of "Iras." She assigns pseudonyms also to family members but is inconsistent in her other references, calling her husband-to-be, for example, by his actual nickname, Hutch. How many years of investigation did DeBoer-Langworthy spend in simply figuring out who all these people were?

The diary entries from 1903 contain juicy gossip about the expatriate literary and art practitioners gathered around Florence. Seemingly ordained to detachment, Boyce embraced its virtues and defined herself repeatedly as an observer. Indeed her descriptions of landscape, art, and architecture are fulsome and vivid. When it came to her fellow humans, this detachment served her a little less well. The gatherings she described tended to be told rather than shown, much attention was paid to dress, and often the lingering impression left by her comments on her companions revealed mainly whether or not she liked them. Here is one of her takes on Gertrude Stein, whom, in fact, she liked quite well: "We enjoyed Gertrude's visit, though she rather got on my nerves at times by her habit of not bathing and wearing the same clothes all the time." The diaries are told in the first person; Boyce is "I" or "me"; but interestingly, when at the end of this segment Boyce learns of her father's death, suddenly she reverts to calling herself Iras.

Eleven years later, on the eve of World War I, Boyce's prose took on greater urgency and immediacy, as the intersection of personal lives and cataclysmic world events lent suspense and plot line to her deft dissection of the barriers to fleeing Italy. Even in her diaries, this episode reveals, Boyce wrote with a true professional's eye to publication. Not knowing if she and her two children would make it out of Italy alive (they did), she nonetheless wrote of wanting the very journal she was writing to get successfully delivered to her husband in the States, destined presumably for the public record.

Throughout the worries of motherhood, the insults of a philandering husband, and the thunder of war, Neith Boyce kept on writing. Congratulations to editor Carol DeBoer-Langworthy for restoring this significant woman‚s life to our attention.

Now that the University of New Mexico Press has published Carol
Deboer-Langworthy "The Modern World of Neith Boyce," scholars and
professors can no longer ignore Neith's immeasurable and major
contribution to the forming of both the feminist movement and the
Modernist movement. The discovery of Neith's autobiography and her
personal diaries by the author is to the Modernists what the discovery of
Zora Neale Hurston's work was to the Harlem Renaissance.

Lawrence was a good traveller in these parts and he spent a lot of time carefully observing the Indians he met along the way. He was particularly interested in the ways of thought of the Indians and their religious beliefs and the ways their ideas differed from yours and mine. On simple concepts like time and distance, for example: "To an Indian, time is a vague, foggy reality. There are only three times: en la manana (morning); en la tarde (afternoon); en la noche (night). But to the white monkey (you and me) there are exact spots of time, such as five o'clock and half past three." The Indian's concept of God was different from ours. "With the Indians...there is strictly no god. The Indian does not consider himself as created and therefore external to God, or the creature of God. There is, in our sense of the word, no God. But all is godly. There is no great mind directing the universe. Yet the mystery of creation, the wonder and fascination of creation shimmers in every leaf and stone... There is no God looking on. The only God there is is involved all the time in the dramatic wonder and inconsistency of creation. God is immersed, as it were, in creation, not to be separated or distinguished. There can be no ideal God." Lawrence does a wonderful job of digging into this exotic culture and explaining to us the significance of Indian rituals and dances. I particularly liked one of his statements: "The Indian is completely immersed in the wonder of his own drama." There is also a lovely example of descriptive travel writing in "Market Day", a chapter that makes you slow down your reading pace to savor the beautiful descriptions of small things like a bird's flight or flowers in a doorway. I guess this is the difference between reading and information-processing, which we do so much of today.

D.H. Lawrence writes like a painter would write were he to. What is most real in the writings of Lawrence is the physical world, and of course the body. Mornings in Mexico is really a slight work but with a charm to it. There is a relating of facts (especially about Indian life and thought) that you would expect from a travel piece but the charm is in the kind of easy sauntering pace that the narrative keeps. That feeling that it is vacation time and there really is no hurry. The house he lives in for his stay in Mexico and the surrounding markets and open fields in which he walks and the balcony he stands on in the morning with parrot are all pleasantly described. It feels like a place you want to be. The way time away should feel. There is a slight mournful air to the fact that the Americans are beginning to spoil the place, it is as if the Americans have brought that intruder time itself into this timeless land. It's not so much the details you will remember as the overall feel of the work. And Lawrence himself. And here he seems at ease, searching as always but not desperately so, which is a nice Lawrence to spend time with.

Thomas J. Steele's New Mexican Spanish Religious Oratory 1800-1900 is a well-researched collection of orations and sermons delivered to the devout parishioners of various parishes and congregations in colonial and territorial New Mexico. He begans his work with a rich sermon delivered on Good Friday by Mexican-born Manuel Antonio Garcia del Valle, a Franciscan priest then assigned to Nambe Pueblo. While Steele disects the form and structure of the sermon, he inherently reveals something of the academic or intellectual strength also found in Nuevo Mexico in the early 1800's. Essentially, while the Church and general populace of Nuevo Mexico are frequently described as lacking in organization, learnedness, and culture in that era, Steele produces evidence of all of these elements.

Steele then provides three orations of the infamous Padre Antonio Jose Martinez. Here, the reader is exposed to . . . something of the substance of the man. In reviewing his sermons, one begins to know more personally a young Padre Martinez --who was cordial to non-Catholic Clergymen, who early-on embraced the leadership of his eventual nemesis (Bishop Lamy), and who cherished the notion of America's liberty for all men.

Other sermons and teaching by Joseph P. Machebeuf, Lamy himself, and other Presbyterian and Methodist figureheads are then provided. Again, the sermons are but the first view at what Steele undoubtably intends, --to give meaning and context to our view of an earlier era in New Mexico, to personalize the participants, --both orators and parishioners, for the reader.

In summary, the content of Steele's work is a fine and authentic example of Christianity as it was delivered to Nuevo Mexicanos in the 1800-1900's. Just as important, he critiques his orators every step of the way, permitting us not only to see their writing and hear their sermons, --but to come to know the values of the man, the orator, and his intentions for his listeners.

This book is a "must" for any serious student of New Mexico history.

The Jesuit Father Thomas Steele brilliantly informs our knowledge of Church History in a broad sense as well as closely in the colonial New Mexico period, beginning with the early Franciscan friars and proceeding through the Protestant incursions.

Thus we find published here primary documents in the handwritten copies of sermons from 1800 (although perhaps earlier) up to 1900, ably translated by the learned Reverend Father Steele from the archaic Spanish into modern English. He apologizes for his mehodology in his introduction, admitting that in order to relay the spirit and personality of the sermonizer to the modern reader, he performed in some instances a hermeneutic rather than a strictly literal translation which would have relayed to us less of the sense of the original oratory now so alien to our thought.

In fact, the title in itself might stun some modern readers. Oratory here is not some post-Renaissance form of European quasi-liturgical music, nor is it a place in which to pray (as if prayer depends on location). Rather the titular sense of the term oratory reflects the original sense of the Latin word, coming from the word to pray (as in Ora et Labora, or Ora pro nobis), with also the sense as in the title of the historical work Frederick Douglass: Oratory from Slavery (Great American Orators). Oratory thus is a formal public speech, often in Church, but later in academic or political pleadings.

Here we have translated in this bilingual edition the public oratory of a series of clergy preaching in New Mexican territory, in the period well before becoming a United State of America, and reaching in fact into the Spanish colonial period. As mentioned above, the Reverend Father Steele not only translates very effectively these texts, but has also transcribed them from very difficult, idiosyncratic and archaic handwritten sources barely preserved under often unfavorable conditions. Herein we find Father Steele's transcription of the original upon the facing page of his translation, and thus are invited in his introduction to supplement his translation with reference to the original as well as to his copious footnotes.

Indeed Father Steele's footnotes, ample introductions to each writer, including historical setting, and lengthy general introduction, which make up the bulk of the text are in themselves scholarly wonders. Not only is Father Steele an excellent transcriptionist and translator, but also a keenly insightful and comprehensive historian, as well as an engaging and lively writer himself.

I had never before considered the apocalyptic vision of the early Fransciscan friars, who found the eschatological reality in this New World, this New Creation, this New Heaven and New Earth, and especially within the New Adam and the New Eve inhabiting this New World. Thus the Franciscans at least of this area approached the indigenous peoples with a much differnet attitude and theology than the later colonialist and monarchical impositions of the Tridentine diocesan hierarchy. We observe this phenomenon up to our present time, in which great Catholic Theologians such as Friar Leonardo Boff expresses our Faith from the perspective of the poor, and for this was briefly silenced (for example see his excellent commentary and study of the Lord's Prayer: The Prayer of Integral Liberation.

Thus this chronicle begins with sermons from the Franciscans of the Northern Territory in a pair of sermons, accompanied by the lengthy and academic and well written introduction by Father Steele. Among other clergy, Father Steele includes sermons from the French clergy who served this New Mexican territory, copying and translating their Spanish sermons in what few documents remain from them. After other Catholic clergy, Father Steele concludes with his translations of sermons by Presbyterian and Methodist preachers, inclduing his study of their provenance and theologies.

Throughout Father Steele not only serves as excellent historian but also astute theologian. This beautifully bound book well fills a gaping need in any library of ecclesiology and in itself serves as compelling reading as presented and performed by the brliiant and Reverend Father Steele.

Congratulation! An exceptionally well written problem-solving book and the price is good for a teacher and a student to discover the beauty of math from a competitive perspective.

A gentle and nice introduction to math contest problems. The problems are beautifully posed and many are unusual. Most are not as hard as Titu Andreescu's problems but serve as excellent prelude to them.

This is a nice quick read for an adult, and if you've got a child who has nightmares easily, I suggest you quickly read it before turning it over to him or her. It's not particularly scary, but easily scared kids will disagree with me!

As far as Carole's concerned, nothing is as it should be - they are far from their "real" home, the one they'd shared with her father before the divorce, and they are moving in with Uncle Jake, but Uncle Jake is missing. From the moment they arrive, Carole finds the house a little spooky. The house has nothing on Perky Patty.

Perky Patty is a lifesized doll that resembles the daughter Jake lost years ago, the daughter who grew up with Carole's mother and after whom Carole was named. She also bears a striking and disturbing resemblance to Carole! Perky Patty begins to walk and talk on her own but will only talk to Carole. Is this real? Or is it Carole's mis-placed sorrow over her parents' divorce and the loss of her lifelong home? And what, if anything, does the doll have to do with Uncle Jake being missing?

Hello all. I just wanted to let the reader know that I am the girl on the cover of this book. When I was younger I usually chose a book by its cover...now that I'm older I realize that it is not its cover that should intrest you but possibly the short excerpt on the back cover that should grab your attention and make you want to read it. Now basically what I'm saying is that even though I'm on the cover that did not initially want to make me read the book it was what was on the back cover that had interested me so much to do so. The book was very enjoyable and easy to follow I would reccommend it to any child to read...and not just because I want to show myself off.

Covering the history of cattle ranching from before Columbus to the present day; it allows you to see how each step of the process evolved from the situation before. Discusses the contributions from the Spanish and English emigrants, and the African slaves. Reviews which breeds were used where,how they did, and why. The economics of success and failure of the different regions. Clear and easy reading for those with only a passive interest and enough tables and references and footnotes for a college paper.

The book is excellent; takes a complex look at how ranching developed in North America and replaces many myths with facts. A cultural geographer, Jordan is a consummate researcher and explores the way cattle (and people) moved into North America, and how it shaped settlement. If you are like me, and bristle when reading Walter Prescott Webb, because you just KNOW it's not really like that--this book explains what really happened, as cattle and people moved onto the Plains. He provides lots of valuable bibliographic sources, too.