Arizona Books

Writing about Oak Creek Canyon can be like writing about the Grand Canyon: it is difficult to find something that has not been said. Lawrence Cheek is one of the finest writers I have read; he not only covers his subject seamlessly, but reading his work is a pure pleasure for the language. He is erudite without ever being stuffy, descriptive without being flowery and thoroughly entertaining.
I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants an oveview of the Oak Creek area.

This book is very interesting & very thorough on everything you want to know about the Sedona vortexes. If you are planning a visit there, you will want to bring this book along with you. It includes maps and many helpful hints.

Collaboratively edited by Carter Jones Meyer (Associate Professor of History and Convener of the American Studies Program, Ramapo College, New Jersey) and Diana Royer (Associate Professor of English, Miami University), Selling The Indian: Commercializing & Appropriating American Indian Cultures is a scholarly, serious anthology of contributors surveying over a hundred years of attempts and practices using Native American culture for commercial profit, in eight original essays that range in topic from "white shamanism" to Cherokee basketry and tourist economies. A unique, informative, insightful, and very welcome contribution to Native American Studies, Selling The Indian showcases and documents commercialization as a form of cultural imperialism and a danger to American Indian culture to identity is discussed and analyzed in this careful and thought-provoking treatise.

I greatly enjoyed this book. It is a good read and would make a valuble addition to the collection of any student of Arizona history or of the workings of the United States Senate. Most of all, it is a tome about the importance of loyalty and decency in politics and in life written by one of the fine public servants in Arizona history and one of Arizona's premier historians. It is particularly revealing about the ethical conflicts inherent in political campaign fundraising. For southern Arizonans it is also very illuminating about the political anthropology of that region.

Ruth Y. Okimoto, Ph.D, researched and uncovered the evidence which lead to the Office of Indian Affairs' decision to offer Poston, Arizona as one of 10 desolate relocation campsites for over 18,000 West coast Japanese and Japanese-Americans during World War II following President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942.

You will not read this type of factual information in any textbook. Learn about the uniqueness of the intermingled history between the Japanese and Japanese-Americans and the Colorado River Indian Tribes, who were forceable relocated from their homes to this Arizona desert. Learn how their desert home was pre-destined to become today's prime agricultural land.

This report was the driving force behind the creation of the Poston Restoration Project, sponsored by the non-profit organization, Poston Alliance, Inc.

A Short Reference Grammar of Gulf Arabic is excellent, probably the best academic work of the author Hamdi Qafisheh, and indispensible for doing the exercises in the latter's Gulf Arabic Intermediate Arabic (in which grammatical explanations are sometimes insufficient and grammatical models even absent). This Short Reference Grammar focuses on UAE colloquial Arabic, particularly that prevalent in Abu Dhabi, though linguistic variations in Bahrain and Qatar are not ignored. However, this short reference grammar appears, at times, too short and not sufficiently systematic; for example, the perfect form of the verb "ya" (come) is given in tabular form but not the imperfect. More complete treatment of hollow verbs specifically and verb conjugations in general would have been appreciated. Pages 2-35 are actually concerned with phonetics rather than grammar proper. There is no index so the reader has to surf through the table of contents for a specific subject-matter, which then requires flippng though several pages of text to find a particular item like, for example, the perfect of "ya." Nonetheless, these are minor quibbles. Buyers should note that this tome contains no grammatical exercises; it is a pure reference although, somewhat gratuitously, the author has foisted on pages 247-259 a series of essays and sayings with Engish translations. Although based on research conducted by the author some 35 years ago, with application of modest effort, it is possible to learn a lot of contemporary Gulf Arabic grammar from this book. The Short Reference Grammar is quite readable not being unduly mired with technical linguisitc terminology. The author deserves great credit for writing this volume. It is likely to serve as the leading primer on Gulf Arabic grammar for the foreseeable future.

I thought the book was wonderful and I truly feel for Arizona. I am a distant cousin of hers and I truly enjoyed the book. My grandfather was a Wiggins from the same small georgia town.

"The Silver of the Sierra Madre," which plays off the title of B Traven's masterpiece, is a history book that reads like an adventure story. It centers on the Americans John Robinson and Alexander Shepherd, and others like them, who came to northern Mexico to get rich by opening silver mines. Hart uses primary sources such as diaries, letters and obscure books in both English and Spanish to chronicle the difficulties these American capitalists had as they searched for silver. The book is centered on Batopilas, one of the most unusual towns and earth, at least as difficult to reach as a Nepalese town in the Himalayas. To get there you had to ride on mules through some of the most beautiful and dangerous country on the planet, the Barranca del Cobre, a system of seven canyons that makes our Grand Canyon seem small by comparison. This is a little known part of American history that professor Hart makes come alive with the skill of a novelist backed up by the research of a great historian .

For anyone interested in the Copper Canyon region of the Mexican State of Chihuahua this books is a welcome addition to the rather small canon of works about this area of Mexico (in English no less!). Hart provides a good synthesis that is equal parts, travel log, 19th century business practices study, all set within the cultural back ground of the residents of the canyons. Many people who have interest in this area of Chihuahua are well acquainted with Grant Shepherd's book "Silver Magnet" and will find this an excellent "prequel" as well as a scholarly counterpoint to that work. The first half of this work is dedicated to the ownership of the mines in Batopilas by John Robinson, and the second half to the ownership of the mines under Alexander Shepherd. To round out the work Hart provides us with 25 mostly historic photographs of the area. Shepherd's business practices are well exposed as are those of the Mexicans in the second half of the book and it is easy to understand the frustrations of the lower classes. For those of us in the United States similar conditions frequently existed though the response in the early 20th century brought the system back to equilibrium unlike Mexico which erupted in violence.

Hart's writing makes for a fast and interesting read though he does tend to relate some points more than once throughout the book. He also has a tendency to alternately refer to the principal characters by their last names then by first names where it is my experience most writers of history tend towards always referring to their subject by last name only. Then again this more casual style may well be the ultimate reason the book is more reader friendly compared to some other history books.

Curiously, Hart mentions at least twice in this book that John Robinson's grandson married General Luis Terrazas' only granddaughter. It would seem from Mark Wasserman's book "Capitalists, Caciques, and Revolution" that General Terrazas had a multitude of granddaughters. Also, in the introduction Hart's mentions that Batopilas was under the political administration of Nueva Galicia and perhaps this should instead read Nueva Vizcaya.

Hart is to be commended for taking up this particular subject matter and especially for choosing the setting of the Sierra Madre of Chihuahua. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the Copper Canyon and to those who have family origins or relatives from that area of Chihuahua.

This book has 45 tours in 4 areas of Arizona--Northern, White Mountains, Mogollon Rim, and Southern. 136pp. Introductory material on ski history in Arizona, winter hazards, preparing for your tour, ethics and touring, and night skiing. Each tour is covered with a topo map, and is rated by terrain, time, distance, and lists topo maps required. The descriptions describe the route and what you see along the way. Sturdy paper cover. Sadly out of print, but used copies are floating around.

Very well reserched and written. Also very readable and not too technical. I just love the detailed maps