New Mexico Books

I think that this was the best book that I read. it was even better then a history book. It made me feel as if I was there whne this took place. I had a hard time putiing it down. by using this book I got an A on my term paper.

The subject necessarily begins with the California Attorney General and future Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren's decision to allow the state's Japanese-Americans to be interred shortly after the opening of World War II. Warren was ambivalent at the time, and later regretted his controversial decision. But that the decision arose at all evidences the presence of the racial ideology; whose depths, strength, and effects are so hard to fathom and grasp in today's multicultural culture. The discrimination against the Japanese is a starting point and something of a focal point because it is the most well-known and notorious. But Leonard, with the department of history at Western Washington U., ranges much beyond this to prevalent discrimination and related overt hostility against blacks and Hispanics. The L A. "Zoot-Suit Riots...involv[ing] attacks by navy and army personnel" upon young men of these minorities are but one instance of the acceptance and virulence of the area's racism. Leonard's study pays particular attention to the part of "repeated verbal conflicts about the meaning of 'race'" in the racially-oriented "battle for Los Angeles."

Readers who appreciate stories within stories will be deeply pleased with this book. The author did her research well and her descriptions of the field biologists' work is vivid and believable. The underlying stories that run through the main plot augment an understated but defined spiritual self-realization that impacts and changes the main characters forever.

This is a classic New Mexico tale by a man whose life spanned the late 19th century into the middle of the 20th. There are wonderous tales of grizzly bears, cattle russlers and trout fishing contests here. This is the history of what is now the Pecos wilderness from the time New Mexico was still a territory thru the modern Forest Service. This is one book about the history of New Mexico you shouldn't miss.

This courageous book challenges the assumptions of a white patriarchal eurocentric dominant society. While corporations continue to destroy the enviornment while at the same time enforcing the poverty of People of Color, this book offers instead a brilliant discourse, an investigation of the noble spiritual traditions of the Sioux. This is an important book.

Begoso Cabin is the account of a woman's experiences living in a remote canyon in the mountains of northern New Mexico. The author has described the land, the animals, the people in vivid detail. The book is replete with pleasing morsels of historical research beginning with the Pecos Indians who once hunted the area, the region's importance as the entry into Mexican territory on the Santa Fe Trail, the takeover of the Southwest by the United States, the legal hassles over the old Spanish land grant on which the Begoso cabin is located, to today's village customs and economy. Begoso Cabin partakes of a genre of women's writing that is characterized by such authors as Annie Dillard, Dorothy Gilman, Gretel Ehrlach and others who have retreated to the wilds to write their stories. Begoso Cabin is a good read, full of historical, and often humorous, anecdotes, sensitve landscape description, and sociological commentary on village life rendered in a vibrant and poetic prose.

What a wonderful little collection of true stores surrounding the Baca family during the early 1900's in Northern New Mexico! La Farge's writing of the beauty and awe of this special area of New Mexico and the unique members of this family causes the reader to lament the loss of such people and places. Thankfully, Northern New Mexico is still a unique and wonderful place. This book helps me remember that - even though I live so far away.

In a newly updated, revised, and expanded edition, Bell Ranch: Cattle Ranching In The Southwest, 1824-1947 is an informative, engaging, at times fascinating history of cattle ranching in the Southwest from the founding of the Bell Ranch as part of a Spanish government land grant, down to the present day when it is much smaller, but still very active and viable. Here is also a history of the people that saw the Bell Ranch through hard and turbulent times, that lived and worked as cattlemen plying their trade in the cattle country of the southwest. David Remley (Professor Emeritus at the University of New Mexico) provides a skillfully written and admirably presented 416 page history that is enhanced with vintage photographs. Bell Ranch is very highly recommended reading for students of the American southwest in general, and cattle ranching in particular.

My husband loves this book and has read it several times. Hopefully I can get it away from him long enough to read it myself. There's a wealth of great information in this book and it applies to today as well as the past.

The cuentos/stories are warm and quite different from other folklore stories. The stories aren't just thrown at the reader. Each cuento has its own introduction to create a mood and preserve a memory of the past. I am from Truchas (near Chimayo) and vaguely remember some of these cuentos. Don Usner did a wonderful job of preserving these stories before DVDs conquer the world. The stories are first told in English with occasional Spanish phrases interwoven, and all Spanish is followed by a translation for the English reader. The stories are retold in Spanish in the 2nd part of the book, minus the introductions provided with the English versions. These are great stories and well written to read to children. My favorite cuento has to be El Viejo Tuerco (Old One-eyed) because I do remember looking for treasure in old trees.