Arizona Books

An immensely beautiful book. Awing in its sensitivity, delicacy, and completeness of language - "sculptured in the heavens," one thinks as one looks up. On every page, in every paragraph, there is caring for - more than caring, a love affair with - its subject.

But I can add little beyond admiration to Eileen Berton's fine little sketch of it below.

This book is remarkable for its breadth and depth, and for its fluid and totally enjoyable narrative. Montgomery brings a scholarly, well-organized, imaginatively catholic mind to his study of the moon, as mapped, observed, and imagined by Western minds. His enthusiasm for his subject is contagious. He discusses the early cartography so important to popular conceptions of the moon, the moon's complex and changing relationship to Christianity and Judaism, philosophy, mathematics, literature, and art. Importantly, he provides an orderly and very interesting history of Western conceptions of "the first modern planet." The Arab contribution to astronomy is detailed. The relationship of mathematics to astronomy is also explored, fluidly and appropriately for the lay person. Galileo, Copernicus, and scores of lesser-known astronomers and scientists come to life in this book. "The British Contribution," a chapter on sixteenth century lunar pioneers Dr. Wm. Gilbert and Thomas Harriot, is excellent. Montgomery also analyzes cartographic evidence - and provides commentary. This book combines scholarship with a fine and elegant narrative, the bibliography is terrific, and I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in this subject, which becomes downright thrilling in this book.

This book is remarkable for its breadth and depth, and for its fluid and totally enjoyable narrative. Montgomery brings a scholarly, well-organized, imaginatively catholic mind to his study of the moon. His enthusiasm for his subject is contagious. He discusses the early cartography so important to popular conceptions of the moon, the moon's complex and changing relationship to Christianity and Judaism, philosophy, mathematics,literature, and art. Importantly, he provides an orderly and very interesting history of Western conceptions of "the first modern planet." The Arab contribution to astronomy is detailed. The relationship of mathematics to astronomy is also explored, fluidly and appropriately for the lay person. Galileo, Copernicus, and scores of lesser-known astronomers and scientists come to life in this book. "The Britsh Contribution," a chapter on sixteenth century lunar pioneers Dr. Wm. Gilbert Thomas Harriot, is particularly well-told. Montgomery also analyzes cartographic evidence - and provides commentary. This book combines scholarship with a fine and elegant narrative, and I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in this subject, which becomes downright thrilling in this book.

What is it about the Moon that captures the fancy of humankind? A silvery disk hanging in the night sky, it conjures up images of romance and magic. It has been counted upon to foreshadow important events, both of good and ill, and its phases for eons served humanity as its most accurate measure of time. With the invention of the telescope at the turn of the seventeenth century-coinciding with the rise of the scientific revolution-the Moon took on new meaning as a tangible place with mountains and valleys and craters that could be named and geological features and events that could be studied.

Geologist Scott L. Montgomery has produced a richly detailed analysis of how the Moon has been visualized in Western culture through the ages, revealing the faces it has presented to philosophers, writers, artists, and scientists for nearly three millennia. To do this, he has drawn on a wide array of sources that illustrate the changing concept of nature and the significance of heavenly bodies from classical antiquity to the dawn of modern science.

Montgomery especially focuses on the seventeenth century, when the Moon was first mapped and its features named. He explores in depth the literary works of Francis Godwin's "Man in the Moone" and Cyrano de Bergerac's "L'autre monde." But he also carries the story to the present, showing how humanity has over time elevated the Moon to a sublime level.

As Montgomery concluded, humans have always assigned a close approximation of the Earth to lunar ideas. When we ultimately colonize the Moon the irony is that we will be setting up shop on a world steeped in a deep human tradition of imagination and history. This is a superb work that explains far more effectively than other works on the subject, the lure of the Moon for humanity.

This is the best horse book I've ever read. Leeann loves horses so much it must have been hard not being allowed to ride whenever she wanted to. This book tells you it doesn't matter what you look like on the outside, but on the inside. More than a horse was so easy to understand. I had a perfect picture in my mind from a page of words. I LOVED THIS BOOK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I've had this book since I was younger. I am seventeen now, but I used to read this book constantly. It was a joy to read, but I wasn't completely satisfied with the ending, because it never really solved the problem of her moving back to Charlotte. She will still be moving, so in a way, it wasn't a very happy ending. It was more of a bitter sweet finish...

More Than A Horse is about a girl who her father's dead and she lives with her mother. They have to move to a new place because her mother found a good-paying job. She likes this place because its on a ranch- with lots of horses. If she gets along with Amos, the head wrangler, she gets to ride horses whenever there's one available. She meets great new friend from school, helps a handicapped kid, finds a horse that she loves dearly, and more.

This book is on MY best book reviews.
It captures real issues like the theriputic riding programs and friendships with horses and fellow riders AND family.
The only thing i'd love to see more of is the trail ride on the Percherons to find find Sassy.
Gushy stuff!
Overall: fantastic horselover fantasy!

After writing for two newspapers in the greater Los Angeles area, I moved to Yuma and was called to be on a five week jury trial about a man who alledgedly murdered his wife.
The opening statements were so bizarre, I was captivated at once and knew that I had to write about the case. And so it was that I took copious notes that were taken away from me at the end of the trial! I felt that it should be public information at that point and was miffed to say the least! After three years of not getting it off my mind, I decided to go to the Clerk of the Superior Court's office and begin to take notes from the transcripts. I gained insights that the jury wasn't privy to. I also obtained a copy of the huge police report. Just taking notes took me six months as I didn't have a lap-top computer at the time.
So after about chapter 13 had been written, I became seriously ill and was diagnosed with a brain tumor and severe electrolyte embalance. I was in the ICU for eleven days and the hospital a month. I was like a three year old when I got out. I didn't know my husband or children at first. I couldn't remember words. I was brain damaged for two years and a doctor told me it was permanent. I knew that after all the years of college, it was a great loss, as I'd always valued my knowlege most of all.
Finally, after two years, my brain seemed to re-route itself and much of my long-term memory came back. It's been a long road and difficult to finish the book, now that I'm fighting spelling problems and typing problems that I never had before. I have amnesia for 2003 and some of 2004. Just two days ago I figured out that I got out of the hospital four years ago instead of five, like I thought, which makes the pets younger than I thought, but somehow I'm still the right age! So time is still difficult for me and short-term memory loss is embarrassing.
Despite my problems, I am getting so many compliments about the book that are so heart-warming. It's nice to know that people can relate to everything that I wrote. Some have said that they felt like they were there on the jury too. I even got compliments and quotes from one of the prosecutors who wanted to know why I changed his name! He even bought a book for his dad too.
I was, according to the doctor, "just hours away from dying" when I arrived in emergency and happy to have come back to this world to finish writing my book for people who have enjoyed reading it. And those of you who are pestering me for the next one, I'M WORKING ON IT! Best Wishes, Cher

'Murder by Gravity?' is a true crime drama that captures ones imagination and keeps one turning pages long into the night. The cast of characters is so strangely interwoven that it leaves the reader with questions that only real life is capable of presenting. A thoroughly enjoyable read, I find myself looking forward to her next offering.

I think the book is well written and the characters facinating. However, not the type I would invite home to tea. I honestly felt as though I was sitting in the jury box. I do recommend it to any one who enjoys Ann Rule and true crime stories. The story delivers all that's promised in the blurb

This is a perfect murder mystery. I was engrossed by this book from beginning to end. It was hard to believe it was a true story. Just the fact that one person could do that to another! Can't wait till it's made into a movie. Looking forward to her next book. She's a wonderful writer.

`Murder Unpunished: How the Aryan Brotherhood Murdered Waymond Small and Got Away with It' by Thornton W. Price III, has brought to life the events that I only remembered through newscast snippets and the occasional news paper editorial.

`Murder Unpunished' allows the reader to contemplate the concepts of the law being rational, yet the interpretation of the law may seem irrational. The reader can also reflect on why a person can act despicable yet still receive grace. Mr. Price presents the reader with an opportunity to question the concepts of revenge and universal justice. These themes of duality, like old friends, are revisited here in the pages penned by Mr. Price from his autobiographical and historic perspectives that have matured over time. He is unapologetic.

I for one wish to apologize for the state of Arizona's justice.

This book was very informitive about the code that convicts live under. Its a testament to learning to keeping your mouth shut when you do some dirt. Prison gangs are hardcore and the Aryan Brotherhood was formed in california with blood and sacrafice to protect white inmates, anybody who joins knows the commitment they are making as a soildier ( blood in blood out )

Inmates bent on running the asylum in an out-of-control prison dominated by homicidal gangs. Official corruption. Fraudulent land scales. A car bombing. Jurisdictional struggles. Hypnosis. A hung-over judge. Prosecutorial misconduct. A senile attorney.
What might sound like the ingredients of an over-wrought novel are the facts of Durango author Thornton W. Price III's nonfiction true crime book, "Murder Unpunished," published by The University of Arizona Press on July 1.
The cast of characters includes a future U.S. Supreme Court justice (Sandra Day O'Connor), a future Democratic presidential candidate (Bruce Babbitt) and the man who pioneered the psychological autopsy (Dr. Otto Bendheim).
But most of the players in this extraordinary peek at Arizona State Prison run amok came straight from Satan's casting call, even down to the unfortunate Waymond Small, possibly one of the nation's least likable murder victims.
The time is the late 1970s. In less than two years, there have been 14 murders and dozens of assaults at Arizona State Prison. The Arizona Republic has cast a relentless eye on the mayhem. The political pressure to do something ratchets up. And finally the Aryan Brotherhood takes a bridge too far with the murder of Small on the eve of his testimony to the state legislature.
Price, the author, was a young attorney. One of the inmates charged in connection with Small's death-a group collectively known as the Florence Eleven-ends up being Price's first murder case.
Tempting though it must have been, Price wisely avoids much use of the first-person in this economically written account of five murder trials. When he does resort to it, it's justified by the insight it offers.
My own first nonfiction true crime book, "Someone Has to Die Tonight," is scheduled to be published as a Pinnacle mass market paperback in March. I know the challenge Price took on in combing through 16,000 pages of court records and conducting interviews with key players for his narrative.
I also know how his involvement in the case probably made the task harder. I became a confidential informant in the case of a self-styled teen militia that I was documenting. Separating oneself from the story and keeping the narrative focused becomes more difficult when there's a personal connection.
The Florence Eleven was the case for Price: The case that every cop, attorney or crime reporter knows about-the one you never forget. In spite of this, Price showed remarkable discipline in his writing, and it serves his readers well.
My literary attorney, Bob Pimm, counseled me to make my book a train ride that readers wouldn't want to get off. The train needs to take off in the first chapter, he said, and the reader needs to want to say on all the way to the end.
Price kept me on the train.
"Murder Unpunished" has moments of writing that jumps out for its eloquence or economy. He describes one murder in two pithy sentences: "Even with a loaded gun to his head, the idiot wouldn't shut up. He'd dared him to shoot, so he did."
And here's how one of the large cast is introduced: "With a thin, six-foot-seven-inch frame, Jerry Joe `Stretch' Hillyer looked like he'd survived the rack."
And here, another: "Born in Scottsdale one week before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Tidwell's life began in as much ruin as the Pacific Fleet."
Price knows we need humor in a dark tale ridden with murder, rape and drug abuse, and he finds it (somehow it always seems to be there, even in the darkest crime, often because of the extraordinary stupidity of some criminals, whose choices in life seem determined to provide job security for police and prosecutors).
"Did you see anything?" a tired investigator asks in one of 650 inmate interviews after Small's murder.
"No."
"Would you tell us if you had seen anything?"
And then there's Price's account of the state's attempts to hypnotize a witness, a chapter that may alone justify the book's $17.95 cover price.
True crime is a tempting genre for the very reason that makes readers sometimes skeptical the writer could really know all he portrays. How could we know people's thoughts? How could we recapture dialog years after the fact?
It's possible because of the uniquely thorough nature of investigative and court records, around which entire books can be built. It's not an easy task sifting thousands of pages for the specks of gold that add up to a compelling narrative. There are a lot of mediocre true crime books out there. Price's is not one of them.
Here we find a writer unafraid to show a criminal's sheer enjoyment of violence. A writer who's resisted the temptation to include every fact or exchange he personally finds compelling, restraint that must sometimes have been painful.
He knows court procedure and introduces us to terms such as the "slow-form guilty plea"-the trial of someone obviously guilty from the get-go.
He shows us the Mau Maus, the Mexican Mafia, the Native Brotherhood and the Aryan Brotherhood out of control in Arizona's penal system and what was done to fix it. He gets the prison language of kites, fish and punks exactly right in a sometimes profane book that avoids overdosing on cussing and violence.
He explains very well why prison crimes are so singularly hard to investigate.
Down among the human dross, Price somehow emerges with none of the nastiness sticking to him or the reader. Better, he somehow makes us care.
He gives fascinating insight into how the Aryan Brotherhood worked, like a business. And he offers some motivation without making excuses for his unattractive cast.
The case comes as close to Durango as Chimney Rock, just off Highway 160.
Despite a misprint in the spelling of Price's name on the cover (one of those palm to the forehead blunders that has probably cost some hapless copyeditor restful sleep) "Murder Unpunished" is otherwise flawlessly edited.
This is entertaining, educational and compelling. I hope Price will find another case somewhere in his career worth writing about.

Murder Unpunished: How the Aryan Brotherhood Murdered Waymond Small and Got Away With It is a telling example of the truth that entering prison is like entering another culture or country. The rules, customs, and behaviors are foreign to those in the free world. People outside of the walls will never be able to appreciate or accept. The problem, however, is that the prisons are within our country and need to abide by the laws of the United States of America. This book did an excellent job of asking the question, "does justice occur after incarceration?" The short answer is, no. The bigger question to ask is, "when will this country enact laws that can adequately deal with prison gangs and the control that they have in our criminal justice system?" This book is a telling example of all the state and federal correctional facilities will experience with any prison gangs that occupy them. It is a must read for all correctional employees and lawmakers.

My 5-year old daughter received this book as a gift and she and I absolutely love it. Not only does it wonderfully portray the diversity of two cultures and traditions (Native American and Mexican) and the caring relationship between a young girl and her abuela/grandmother, the illustrations add depth, color and vibrancy that reminds me of my Southwestern roots. San Miquel shows a unique ability to add warmth, depth and a vividness of color through her illustrations which I found engages the reader and and adds interest. A fantasic book for new readers. Every library should have one.

Ronnie's work on this book has given many of us a glimpse into the infrastructure of the cultural dimensions of the peoples that have lived and are still very much alive in the areas of Northern Mexico and The American Southwest.

This book will bring joy to children and adults alike. The story shows the closeness of a grandmother and grandchild while utilizing holistic values that have been a part of the Mexican and Native American tradition for hundreds of years. The illustrations are vibrant and exciting to the eyes and are definitely some of the best that I have seen in some time. Edna San Miguel (illustrator) goes beyond the normal (and sometimes dull)illustration techniques that we usually see and adds her own touch of talent and brilliancy that will keep you wanting more.

My Nana's Remedies/Los Remedios de mi Nana is a beautifully presented bilingual children's picturebook (written in both English and Spanish by Roni Capin Rivera-Ashford) about the traditional home remedies that a grandmother lovingly prepares for her granddaughter. Warm, playful color illustrations by Edna San Miguel, celebrate the fulfillment of family obligations and the enhancing of a caring relationship make My Nana's Remedies a very special and most enjoyable book for budding bilingual readers.

this book made me cry. The pictures he captures, especially of the textiles are poetic and seriously moving. I am definately buying a copy of this book for my mom.

Jonathon B. Wittenberg's book does a wonderful job of capturing life as it is in Navajo culture through a Navajo-centered lens as opposed to a Western-lens. I think Tony Hillerman's quote on the back of the book does a wonderful job of capturing my feeling for the Navajo people after reading this book: " What I saw there [the Big Rez] sparked my love affair with The Navajos, their enduring culture of love, good humor and harmony, and the high, dry, dramatic landscape in which they endure. This is a beautiful and valuable book." I certainly fell in love with the Navajos after reading this remarkable book, and I encourage others to read this book to gain further understanding and appreciation for the incredible Navajos.

This is a beautiful, heart warming collection of images, outstanding for the quality of the photographs and above all for the choice of subjects, made with great sensitivity and an obvious love and admiration for the culture it portrays. Viewing Jonathan Wittenberg's photographs will be a memorable experience, especially for Tony Hillerman fans.

Navajo Nation 1950: Traditional Life In Photographs is a compilation of 100 black-and-white duotone-printed photographs taken by Jonathan B. Wittenberg to record and illustrate life on the Navajo reservation in 1950. Truly capturing with an artist's eye the dignity and beauty of an ancient Native American culture surviving in the midst of the broader mid-20th century American nation, Navajo Nation 1950 is a showcase of photographic excellence taken with a bulky, twin-lens reflex camera enabling the preservation through a photographic record of the Navajo people and culture that includes images from the Monument Valley, Black Mesa, Navajo Mountain, Lukachukai (a high bench between the Chuska mountains to the east and the desert plain to the west), Teas Toh (close to the old Highway 66), the Window Rock Navajo Tribal Fair, and the Canyon de Chelley. Enhanced for scholars as well as non-specialist general readers with an interest in Navajo culture with an index to the photographs, and appendix (Progress of a Shootings Chant), and a Navajo reservation map, Navajo Nation 1950 is a welcome addition to personal and academic Photography and Native American Studies collections.

This was one of the most beautiful & interesting books I've ever read. The pictures are breathtaking. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who loves history.

What beautiful pictures ...waves of emotions rippled thru my soul as I turned these timeless pages. Truly a gift to those fortunate enough to find this book in their hands. The history was as incredible as the Sunrise of course!

I saw this book mentioned on NBC Nightly News and decided to get a copy as a gift for my brother, just about all I can find to complain about is the long shipping time and the fact that it only comes as a paperback, not hardback.
Both in Mr. Hillerman's forward and in the photographer's own text you get some Navajo history and philosophy about how/why things happened and their beliefs. Apparently the ancestral Navajos considered four mountains to be the boundaries of their territory, much of that land is still inside present day reservation borders.
The book is divided into four sections, by mountain and north,south,east and west. Each section of the land is represented by some very nice photography, some of it similar to what you might have seen before but more often unfamiliar scenery. It's well worth owning.

The pictures will take your breath away. Absolutely magnificent. The photographer has managed to capture the beauty and sacredness of his land. What a gift!

Good info, but reads like a textbook. Tons of references to other works and papers.

The most complete authority on the peyote cactus, Lophophora williamsii. E. Anderson includes every aspects of peyote- history and religious uses to ethnobotanical, phytochemistry and pharmacology. For anyone interested in learning all aspects of this mystifying plant, Peyote: The Divine Cactus, will allow just that.

This is a very informitive book that covers history, ceremonies,
users experiences, and much more. As a member of the Native American Church I recommed it to members and non-members alike.

This book was a true classic, if you are looking for complete information on the Peyote Cactus, this is the book for you to buy. I cannot recommend it enough, it is one of my favorite books in my collection. It is professional, well written, and informative.

This is a difficult, provocative, awesomely beautiful book -- easily one of the great novels of the twentieth century. I can only think of a handful of other books I've ever read that are as brilliantly and thrillingly written: Styron's The Confessions of Nat Turner; Robert Penn Warren's All the Kings Men, and Faulkner's Sound and the Fury come to mind. It is the story of a man looking for his place in the universe, a member of a dying tribe trying to keeps its legends alive. It is the story of an artist, the story of someone merely trying to live and make sense of what living means. It is the story of every person, every culture, every tribe. I loved it.

Back when the now-infamous Top 100 Books of the Century list was proposed, there were a number of glaring omissions, including Djuna Barnes's Nightwood, William Gaddis's The Recognitions, Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow and, yes, The Place in Flowers Where Pollen Rests. With the exception of William Gass's The Tunnel, I have never read such stunning prose so effortlessly rendered. The book centers around Oswald Beautiful Badger Going Over the Hill; too primitive to adopt white mentality, he is "too tainted with book smarts to be at ease among this tribe." He is overshadowed by the looming presence of his uncle, George The Place In Flowers Where Pollen Rests, a legendary carver of kachina dolls. Haunted by his involvement in the death of a porn actress, Oswald is forced to leave the low-budget film industry. A short time later, the Vietnam War pushes him to the perimeter of sanity. Whitmanesque in its simplicity and affinity for nature, West achieves a lyricism that brings concepts as overarching as constellations into the drawing room and hangs them there like bright mobiles. So detailed and incisive are West's descriptions-whether of life on the mesa, George's carving or Oswald's thoughts-the book is more an experience than a piece of literature. Uncle George tells Oswald "a doll covered with chisel scars is not more beautiful than the universe, of course not; but it is cut to our size, like the television." So West takes art, myth and Hopi cosmology and gives them to us in something handy enough to carry on the subway or leave on the bedstand. West's inexhaustible imagination and uncanny skill with language make the reader realize, as Oswald does, that she or he is part of something as eternal as the seasons and as incalculably vast as what surrounds us.

Back in the fifties, a writer named Jack Green wrote a series of articles blasting the critics for ignoring the genius of William Gaddis's `The Recognitions'. By and large, the reviews were incompetent and had been cribbed from one another-most reviewers had not even read the book. Green went so far as to take out a full-page ad in the Village Voice, at his own expense, exhorting people to buy `The Recognitions'. That is the way I feel about `The Place In Flowers Where Pollen Rests'. The reviewers were anything BUT incompetent-all the reviews I have read have extolled its lyricism, its out-and-out originality and the sheer vision of the author. Readers, however, seem not to have given it its due.

Set on the Hopi mesas of northern Arizona and in the jungles of Vietnam, the book is told alternately by George The Place In Flowers Where Pollen Rests, his nephew Oswald Beautiful Badger Going Over the Hill ("not so much a name as an expedition") and even Sotuqunangu, a Hopi god. "Unhandy names, these," West writes, but they bring something to life on the mesa: a touch of color, which is the obvious thing to say, but also, to the very act of naming, something narrative, as if all of nature had been in motion at the moment of your birth. It was."

Oswald, who has learned to speak English and made his living in Los Angeles as a porn actor, returns after the accidental death of one of the actresses he was working with. He tries to re-establish the relationship with his "uncle", George, a carver of one-of-a-kind kachina dolls (a kachina is a kind of Hopi angel) who is considered the Picasso of his art. Nearly blind and hampered by a failing heart, George, for the first time, has need of Oswald-who is in fact his son-not only as someone to guide him through his perpetual dusk, but to listen to his stories of Hopi gods, Jimsonweed girls and the ghosts of his past. Ironically, it is Oswald who, in his confusion of two cultures, receives guidance and it George's voice, perhaps, that is Oswald's salvation while fighting in Vietnam.

Returning to the mesa after his tour of duty, Oswald tries, after his uncle's fashion, to get up-close and personal with stone formations, with the desert wind and even, after picking up a book on astronomy, with the stars.

There is no page you can turn to in this book where you will not find a sample of an extraordinary prose style or an observation that a lesser novelist would have saved as the punchline to end the book. For example, on the topic of happiness, West writes, "Don't try. Don't try not to try. Happiness is an incidental thing like feathers falling from a bird in flight. Fly, be a bird, and feathers will fall." In these few sentences West has captured the essence of the Baghavadgita and its "Way of Right Action." The book is simply loaded with stunning insights and beautiful sentences--the kind that put many younger authors of "Big Books" (Franzen, DeLillo) to shame. One of the absolute best novels I have ever read, readers have far too long ignored this masterpiece.

PS -- the Voyant edition has two previously unpublished essays at the back of the book; "The Backlash Against the Novel" is a fascinating read all by itself.

To merely say that the prose is lyrically buoyant is not enough, to say that the writing is merely insightful is not enough. I'd probably need the gifts of Paul West to be able to adequately get across to you just how beautiful the experience of reading this book (3x) was for me.

For me to comment on the book's story or plot would be a waste of time, because turning the pages for me was not a matter of what will happen next but a matter of what deftly rendered prose was waiting. You can get lost in it like a Faustian moment, a Coltrane solo, or an inspiration that makes you miss every exit home.

This is West's best work by far, as well as one of the best works to come out of 20th century literature. He is in absolute command of his voice, of his subject, and of his characters. If you love to read for the sake of reading, read this book. You won't be disappointed.

In Whitaker's heavily researched and well-documented study of the struggle for African American equality and rights in Phoenix, he proves without a doubt that racial discrimination was not confined to the South and some Northern cities during the latter half of the twentieth century as is commonly believed, but thrived in the West as well.
However, Whitaker's study does not focus on activist groups or civil rights legislation as one might expect. Instead he looks at the "race work" of the Ragsdales, a wealthy and influential black Phoenician couple who had achieved their career goals against all odds and through their own perseverance. Whitaker chronicles their rise to prominence, but more importantly, examines their contributions to their community and to the civil rights movement, as well as the influence and knowledge they imparted on colleagues and activists.
Their personal experiences along with that of other black Phoenicians provide compelling, but disturbing evidence of racial discrimination in Phoenix from the 1940s through the 1990s in areas such as housing, employment, and public accommodations. Whitaker also includes some discussion of the controversial MLK Holiday issue that earned Arizona the reputation as a racist state during the late '80s and early '90s (as a Californian, I know that Arizona continues to have this reputation in the minds of many people here today).
Dr. Whitaker's book not only helps to fill a gap in the literature on the Western civil rights movements, it also expands the discussion of civil rights from the activists and ministers to other members of the black (and sometimes Hispanic and Jewish) communities who generally do not get recognized for the efforts.
Whitaker cannot discuss every aspect of civil rights and race relations in Arizona during the late twentieth century, but his book is an excellent place to start. Hopefully "Race Work" will encourage more scholars to research this relatively unexplored area of inquiry and expand on the issues Whitaker brings up. Perhaps even more significantly, "Race Work," if read widely, also has the potential to cause many Arizonans, and Americans in general, to re-examine their own attitudes and feelings about race, if they have even examined them at all.

Race Work fills a much needed void on the topic of civil rights in the American West. Dr. Whitaker has written a very readable and insightful book on this topic. Arizona has been overlooked for its trailblazing in the areas of school desegregation, and integration of housing and public facilities. This book is a tribute to Dr. Lincoln Ragsdale, and his wife Eleanor. This is a must read for anyone interested in civil rights, historical perspectives of the American West, and biographies.

Scholars are finally beginning to recognize that African American history, the history of the civil rights movement, and the intersection of race, class and gender in U.S. history, can be examined in areas west of the Mississippi River! Whitaker's work is the latest in a growing body of literature in this area. His book is original, well-researched, and readible. More importantly, it truly offers readers a dramatic and colorful history of African Americans and "race work" in the American west...a region still ripe for further study.

This is the most important book on African Americans in the West in recent years and builds excellently on the scholarship of Quintard Taylor and others.
Dr. Whitaker shows how the Ragsdale's livelihood came through the mortuary business, but was not a dead end for the family, in fact it infused them and the African American community in Phoenix with the lifeblood of cultural and economic resistance and eventually the Valley with changes of integration. The Ragsdale's lives read as a textbook example of change and struggle as their stories are so intertwined with the national narrative for racial equality. Both Lincoln and Eleanor grew up with strong notions of "race work" the idea that you have a responsibility not only to succeed, but to help others in your community succeed too. Lincoln was a Tuskegee airmen and later part of an experiment to see about the integration of the Air force before following in the footsteps of his parents and entering the funereal business. Eleanor was a schoolteacher, prior to leaving her paying work to raise children and focus on the family's business interests.
As the Ragsdale's tried to break into the Phoenix economy and community they found closed doors and prohibitive racial barriers at every corner in the form of segregation and institutional racism. Through "education, entrepreneurship, political activism, integrationism, and philosophy of non-violent protest" the Ragsdale's helped to desegregate businesses, schools and social institutions throughout Phoenix and the Valley of the Sun. This was largely achieved through their social activism and leadership in groups like the NAACP, again tying them to the larger US historical narrative.
This work is very important as it dispels the historiographical myth that African Americans were not Westerners. Instead, it shows how African Americans fought the same kinds of racism and segregation as their counterparts in other regions, but with much less national support. The fight for the Ragsdales was carried out through the strong personalities of a few individuals in the Phoenix Valley, using tactics of national organizations within community associations.
This is an outstanding work and should be used in classrooms of the US West and courses dealing with race relations, as well as community histories. This work is both impressive and comprehensive and is a must own for general readers and scholars alike!