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Arizona Books sorted by Average customer review: high to low .

The Desert Year

Published in Paperback by Univ of Arizona Pr (1985-03)

Author: Joseph Wood Krutch

List price: $16.95

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Collectible price: $45.55

Average review score:

romantic to the core

Helpful Votes: 2 out of 2 total.
Review Date: 2002-01-05

Here is a converted desert romantic with an interest in not only nature but man. Krutch writes and hits the mark like Thoreau and Eiseley and you won't want to miss him or this book if you're looking for a little sanity in a world gone mad.

A Connecticut Yankee in Arizona

Helpful Votes: 7 out of 7 total.
Review Date: 2003-06-08

Written over 50 years ago, this classic book of nature writing captures the near timelessness of the southern Arizona desert in a series of essays describing the author's fifteen-month sojourn there. While Krutch harks back to Thoreau, his perspective, turns of thought, and style of expression are similar to the reflective essays of E. B. White. They begin with observations of plant and animal life and evolve into ruminations on the nature of human life.

Krutch writes of birds, the night sky, bats, saguaro cactus, ocotillo, and desert flowers. Considering them, he rediscovers the truth in ideas he has so long held as true that they've become near platitudes. Where there is plentitude in some things, for instance, there is no need for it in others. Nature cares for the species but not individuals, while human values tend toward the opposite. While every rose has its thorn, the blooming cactus shows us that the reverse is also true. A visit to the vastness and forbidding desert monuments of Cathedral Valley in south central Utah reminds him of the precariousness of human life.

The desert leads Krutch to contemplation of its paradoxes, as well. For instance, the struggle for life here where conditions for survival are more restrictive actually create an uncrowded and more serene ecosystem by comparison with the tropics. The varieties of bird life are vastly greater here than in more temperate climates. A species of toads can live unseen and unheard for 363 days of the year, emerging after a rain fall to sing and reproduce, then disappear and survive somehow in the waterless months between. Finally, there's one question he's never able to answer: why bats fly clockwise from Carlsbad cave.

You can't really know a place, he believes, until you have seen it both as novel and as familiar. A landscape is no more than a picture postcard until you have spent time there and discover yourself in the midst of it. "The Desert Year" is a wonderful account of that process and a celebration of the joy that can be found in settling down for a while in a place that gradually comes to feel like home.

The most extraordinary insight into the magic of Tucson.

Helpful Votes: 7 out of 7 total.
Review Date: 1999-07-14

If you have an interest in the desert and why we live here with JOY you must read this book. Krutch was an extraordinary man and he lived an extraordinary life his first year here. This book is the story of why he stayed instead of returning to New York. It is perhaps the most admired book about Tucson that has ever been written.

The Devil's Blood

Published in Paperback by Howling Wolf Publishing (2002-09-19)

Author: Kirby Jonas

List price: $15.95

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Collectible price: $30.00

Average review score:

Just how good is Kirby Jonas???

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2007-04-04

Another GREAT BOOK by Kirby Jonas. I've read all of his books now and finally gave up trying to rank them - they are all terrific, 6 star out of 5. This book is no exception , I felt like I was riding with Tappan the protagonist all the way -a wonderful read!

The Power of Kirby Jonas

Helpful Votes: 2 out of 3 total.
Review Date: 2002-11-17

My unsatiable appetite for books on the old west has found
momentary satisfaction in The Devil's Blood. Jonas has the
ability and talent to propel your mind and soul to the Arizona desert and foothills where characters are revealed in vivid dimensions. Where emotions and nature's sovereign power collide in panoramic grandeur. I am getting hungry again and anxiously await Jonas' next book written with western film legend Clint Walker.

Western Writing at it'sFinest! Every bit as good as Lamour!

Helpful Votes: 3 out of 4 total.
Review Date: 2002-11-28

Great western story with a hint of actor Clint Walker's personality involved with the title character. If you enjoyed Clint's western movies and the old Cheyenne Show then you will enjoy The Devil's Blood.

Dragon & Hawk

Published in Paperback by Scorched Hawk Press (2004)

Author:

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Average review score:

If you like Diana Gabaldon or Sara Donati read this book.

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2005-08-17

This is a great romantic history, I say that because the story is more than a romance and it's told with excellent historical details. The characters are all so well literarily drawn with attributes and flaws that we can all identify with. As the story grows so does your affection for `the Senora' and Evan, and your hope that their love will prevail. The accents of the characters come across really well, you'll find yourself calling your loved ones `cariad' and referring to your `corazon.' Another character in the book are the Arizona landscape descriptions, each sunrise and sunset are written so detailed that you see every color and reflection of the skies. Everything moment of this book stays with you, you care so much for what happens to the Joneses and those they care for, I hope their story is not over, more please. If you are a fan of Diana Gabaldon or Sara Donati please consider Jude Johnson as another great story teller in their vein. I am looking forward to all three of their next books.

Unique Welsh and Mayan drama

Helpful Votes: 1 out of 1 total.
Review Date: 2005-08-07

This is a wonderful drama about a Welsh miner making his way in Arizona while falling in love with a Spanish and Mayan healer. It weaves two folklores together deftly, and captures the texture and atmosphere of a region. A worthy read. Highly recommended.

Excellent Historical Romance/Western

Helpful Votes: 2 out of 2 total.
Review Date: 2006-07-13

Ms. Johnson captures the multi-cultural flavor of the American West in this tale of love between a Welsh immigrant and a Spanish healer, whose relationship is tested by the harsh realities of life in the late 19th century Arizona Territory. Cultural conflict forms a backdrop to the collapse of the mining industry in Bisbee, the rough and tumble life in Tombstone and the dangerous interference of a rogue outlaw band. The historical detail rings true and adds flavor to wonderfully realized characters and their complex relationships. Highly recommended for any who love historical novels.

Exploring Arizona Wild Areas: A Guide for Hikers, Backpackers, Climbers, X-Country Skiers & Paddlers (Exploring Wild Area Series)

Published in Paperback by Mountaineers Books (1996-05)

Author: Scott S. Warren

List price: $14.95

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Average review score:

Superb guide to Arizona wilderness areas

Helpful Votes: 3 out of 3 total.
Review Date: 2000-08-01

This is an excellent guide for hikers to the wilderness areas in Arizona. It includes many fine areas, such as Apache Creek , Cedar Bench, and Pine Mountain not covered in the newer "Guide to Arizona Wilderness Areas."

Each of the 87 areas includes a quick summary of important info such as distance & elevation, detailed instructions to reach the areas and find the trailheads (and whether 4WD is required), a basic map of the wilderness area (including access roads and designated trails), discussion of geology, plants, wildlife, and sometimes historical notes. Many areas include B&W pictures.

Some areas have descriptions of activities beyond hiking, such as river running, rock climbing, and cross-country skiing.

Exemplary collection of Arizonaýs Wild Areas

Helpful Votes: 3 out of 3 total.
Review Date: 1999-01-01

Covering over eighty designated wilderness areas you will be suprised. The focus of the book is to provide valuable information. Geology, history, plants, wildlife, and seasons to explore are well documented. Areas rarely published make this a great book. I agree with Todd Tiddyman's review, you will enjoy this book time and time again.

A Must For Hiking Arizona

Helpful Votes: 5 out of 6 total.
Review Date: 1997-08-10

This book is one of Scott Warren's exemplary outdoor-related books. This mammoth effort includes area and trail descriptions for 87 of Arizona's Wild Areas. Descriptions of each area include statistics, hiking seasons recommended, plants and wildlife, geology, and a hiking narrative which includes good trail information as well as detailed information on how to access trailheads. An excellent basic map detailing every trail accompanies each area. This book is the first one I reach for when I am looking for Arizona hiking information. I am sure it will be yours too

Gentry's Rio Mayo Plants: The Tropical Deciduous Forest and Environs of Northwest Mexico (Southwest Center Series)

Published in Hardcover by University of Arizona Press (1998-09-01)

Authors: Paul S. Martin, David A. Yetman, Mark E. Fishbein, Philip D. Jenkins, and Thomas R. Van Devender

List price: $80.00

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Average review score:

Review of "Gentry's Rio Mayo Plants"

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2008-05-27

For anyone interested in the vegetation of Sonora, Mexico this book is a must! Back in the early 1980s I was very fortunate to be able to buy a copy of the original Smithsonian book published in 1942 and this current version is a wonderful update of that earlier work. The new book includes additional plant accounts from years of plant collecting in southeast Sonora by botanists at the University of Arizona in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. The authors are careful to keep Gentry's original accounts in parentheses.

Gentry spent a considerable amount of time traveling in the Alamos region of southeast Sonora during the late 1930s and during these travels he collected interesting information concerning the local names and medicinal uses of the plants of southern Sonora. In reading the plant descriptions and associated plant habitats you can almost envision the plant growing and flowering in its native habitat. This book is nicely complimented by "Sonoran Desert Plants" and "The Trees of Sonora, Mexico" which look with greater depth into the larger plants and trees of Sonora.

Hidden treasure

Helpful Votes: 5 out of 8 total.
Review Date: 1999-04-13

I was given the opportunity to catalog Dr. Gentry's herbarium collection at the Desert Botanical Garden in 1987-88. I haven't seen the new edition mentioned here, but read the original work at the time I was cataloging his herbarium specimens. Through it, I was able to share his experience as an explorer in the spirit of John Wesley Powell, someone who knew that the American southwest is best delineated by watersheds, not along false lat/long lines. I met Dr. Gentry a couple of times, and remember the occasions well. Last time I saw him, when I was cataloging his collection, I overheard a conversation between him and a consultant for the Fort McDowell Indian Community. The consultant was asking about desert-adapted crop plants. Dr. Gentry went into great detail describing many desert plants suited to agriculture - tepary beans, jojoba, Lippia (Mexican oregano), agave, chiltepines, gum arabic, etc. I learned a lot just by eavesdropping. The consultant listened, but did not hear the words. He recommended that the Fort McDowell people plant cotton. Not because it was best suited to desert agriculture - far from that. They planted cotton because it needs vast quantities of water. They did not want the best desert-adapted crops. What they wanted, instead, was the best crop for wasting water, so that they could establish valid rights to the water. Worse, I watched them clear off vast acreages of mesquite forests to make room for the water-wasting cotton crop. The Hopi call this koyaanisqatsi. This book should help folks in southwestern north America realize that we have a bounteous resource, if we can only learn to use it.

Excellent reference book

Helpful Votes: 5 out of 5 total.
Review Date: 1999-01-17

Located in a transition zone between the Sonoran Desert and the tropics,this region is well known for its biodiversity, thanks to a 1942 study by botanist Howard Scott Gentry. Revision of his classic work began before his death in 1993. For researchers, this is a must-read book. It provides a clear overview of botanical studies of the Rio Mayo, a contemporary view of the vegatation, excerpts from the original text and an annotated list of plants.

Ghost Towns of Arizona

Published in Paperback by University of Oklahoma Press (1980-06)

Author: James E. Sherman

List price: $19.95

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Average review score:

good directions/history

Helpful Votes: 1 out of 1 total.
Review Date: 2007-08-03

This book had excellent directions and historical information. A must to understand AZ history if you are not a native....or if you just love history. Directions were super. Photos were a little disappointing. Buy in conjunction with another AZ history book with colorful photos and you will be delighted with set.

Rich with accurate history

Helpful Votes: 10 out of 10 total.
Review Date: 2004-04-02

This book provides the reader with some excellent background and historical information about the ghost towns of Arizona. I have found this book to be very useful when trying to find information about the towns that I have visited. In particular, the photographs and illustrations are interesting and gie the reader some sense of what each town and it's colorful residents have to offer the reader. Well written and well illustrated, this book belongs on every western history buffs bookshelf.

Informative, with decent enough maps

Helpful Votes: 8 out of 8 total.
Review Date: 2007-11-01

Not complete by any means (only a multi-volume work of many hundreds of pages could approach that), this is still a useful and informative book on Arizona ghost towns. Concentrating on the southern half of the state, the authors do an excellent job of surveying many of the most important towns and mining camps. Photos, mostly historical, and fairly decent maps are also included. One highlight, especially for those who like to attempt a visit to the sites or at least to mark them accurately on a topo map, is the precise range coordinates included for each location.

An area of special interest for Arizona ghost town enthusiasts is the Bradshaw Mountains south of Phoenix, which at one time contained over 50 towns and camps important enough to boast having a post office. This book spotlights a little more than half of them, not a bad percentage for a work covering a dozen specific regions around the lower half of the state.

The book is an excellent history of about 130 long-abandoned towns and camps, as well as a pretty good guide (in conjunction with topo maps) on how to reach them. Written in 1969, however, whatever remains might have been mentioned at certain sites then may be quite different today. An updated edition would be most welcome.

A Gram Of Mars: Stories

Published in Hardcover by Sarabande Books (1998-07-01)

Author: Becky Hagenston

List price: $21.95

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Average review score:

A fantastic debut!

Helpful Votes: 1 out of 1 total.
Review Date: 2005-06-18

These stories are beautifully, hauntingly written, snapshots that will stay with you long after you've finished reading them. They are brief stories of love and loss, desire and despair, that manage to engage you intimately in the space of a few pages.

My favorite by far was "Fugue", the story of a father obsessed with learning to build and play the organ. I was hooked from the opening lines: "Some fathers on Saturday afternoons fix the car or spray weedkiller on the lawn. Mine would take the air apart and put it back together with a fugue." In the next paragraph, she says, "On summer evenings his organ music got stuck in the screen door and floated on top of the cat's water dish." I love it! I'll never hear music again without this image in my head. Hagenston has managed to make the organ music itself a physical presence in this story, almost another character.

"Fugue" is also the most hopeful of the stories, most of which focus on characters in crisis - a woman whose husband has just left her, a preacher's wife unsure of her new position, a divorced father adrift in the world with only a gram of meteorite to show for his life. "A Gram of Mars" is a wonderfully written collection of short stories. I look forward to reading more from this author.

Richly Textured Lives

Helpful Votes: 1 out of 1 total.
Review Date: 2001-10-22

This book is for anyone who loves Alice Munro or Antonya Nelson or, for that matter, Edith Wharton or any other serious writer who works to create a complex and richly textured world. It's hard to believe that this is a first book. It's terrific.

Funny, heart-breaking, tales of broken people/families

Helpful Votes: 3 out of 4 total.
Review Date: 1999-02-09

My favorite story here is "A Gram of Mars", because it shows the lingering, telling effects of divorce on the child(ren) of the family. Not everyone has parents who are larger than life and impossibly strong; in fact, if you live long enough, no one does. The title story is so sad and so full of love..."Fugue" is magical and hilarious...and "Holding the Fort" was another standout. This author's writing reminded me of Lorie Moore, Anne Tyler, and maybe Francine Prose, just to give a general idea.

Grand Canyon Women: Lives Shaped by Landscape

Published in Paperback by Grand Canyon Association (2004-06)

Author: Betty Leavengood

List price: $18.95

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Average review score:

Grand book!

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2008-01-07

A wonderful look at a number of very special women who are forever entwined with this sacred place.

Very well written with a fabuolous sense of humor

Helpful Votes: 2 out of 3 total.
Review Date: 1999-04-04

A very inspirational book and a must for anyone interested in the Grand Canyon. Betty's sense of humor captivated me throughout.

excellent treatment of a fascinating subject

Helpful Votes: 2 out of 2 total.
Review Date: 1999-03-28

Ms. Leavengood delivers a captivating look at the lives of women who helped to shape the Grand Canyon - not geologically, but culturally. These early explorers helped to open up the Canyon for the millions who would follow, and the author does a great job in capturing the both the appeal of the Canyon and of the women who first made the trip. This book is a must read for anyone interested in the Grand Canyon or the human spirit.

Grand Canyon, Inc.

Published in Paperback by Versus Press (2001-05)

Author: Percival Everett

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Average review score:

Best Comic Writer in America

Helpful Votes: 4 out of 4 total.
Review Date: 2001-09-17

This novel convinces me, were I in need of convincing, that Percival Everett is the most devious, unscrupulpous, and altogether brilliant writer of comedy in America. Hell, he'sprobably the best writer of anything.

Fabulous!

Helpful Votes: 4 out of 4 total.
Review Date: 2001-07-10

This is an immensely enjoyable read. Once I cut it open, I could not put it down. Everett's main character, Rhino Tanner, is so detestable, you end up actually accepting him simply because he revels in his own distorted and destructive ideas. 'Comedy with fangs'? I totally agree.

The funniest thing I've read in a long time

Helpful Votes: 9 out of 9 total.
Review Date: 2001-06-10

I have not read any of Everett's other works but I will now. Grand Canyon Inc. is hilarious--a wild mad-cap romp following the life of red-blooded American, Rhino Tanner, hunter, developer, man's man, and a complete moron. This somewhere between Vonnegut and Voltaire satire chronicals the rise of a shallow mad-man entrepeneur who wants to develop the Grand Canyon. He rides through life on a raft of lies and destroys everything beautiful in his path. Read this book--it is short, brilliant, and laugh-out-loud funny.

Hashknife Cowboy: Recollections of Mack Hughes

Published in Hardcover by University of Arizona Press (1984-09-01)

Authors: Stella Hughes and Joe Beeler

List price: $17.50

Used price: $5.16
Collectible price: $50.00

Average review score:

Hashknife Cowboy

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2007-06-06

This is a wonderful story about coming-of-age, but this book offers much more. It is an authentic account of ranch life in the fading days of the Old West, seen through the eyes of a young ranch boy and recalled now after a lifetime of cowboying. Mack's recollections will delight you. He spins yarns of bad horses and the men who rode them, tells of wild dogs that ravaged young calves, describes the dipping of cattle during the outbreak of the scab in 1925 and recalls lonely winter weeks spent at a remote camp where his home was a shack so flimsy that snow blew through the cracks and covered his bed. Many, many wonderful stories!

Great cowboy memoir . . .

Helpful Votes: 1 out of 1 total.
Review Date: 2006-09-25

There are a bunch of cowboy memoirs out there and this is a good one. Mack Hughes was his parents' third oldest child, with something like seven siblings, almost all of them boys. His father, also a cowboy, brought his family to the huge Hashknife spread near Winslow, Arizona, in the 1920s, and Mack quickly came of age there helping to support the family. When he leaves again, it is 14 years later, and he's had a broad range of experiences from cowboying to running trucks of sugar from Phoenix for local bootleggers. We get to know his brothers (one of them a mechanic and lover of cars) and many more cowboys, some of whom Mack is truly fond of and makes no secret of it.

There are accounts of exteme weather, illness, an infestation of scabbies (cattle) and lice (he and a bed-mate) and spectacular wrecks that leave him with broken bones and a smashed face. He is touched by the deaths of good men, and he has near fatal accidents of his own, once losing a good horse and saddle over a sheer drop into a deep canyon. The language is colorful and salty, and with the help of his wife Stella (who wrote the book) he's able to tell a really good yarn, sometimes exciting as he and some friends chase a wild horse, or darkly humorous as they rid the countryside of wild dogs, or inspiring as he and his family struggle to survive during the Great Depression. The book also has excellent illustrations by Joe Beeler. Thanks to the University of Arizona Press for keeping this fine book in print.

HOW IT REALLY WAS!

Helpful Votes: 1 out of 2 total.
Review Date: 2000-01-09

THIS BOOK IS THE BEST. IT WILL HOLD YOU IN UNTIL THE VERY END. EASY TO READ, INFORMATIONL AND A TRUE EYE-OPENER. IT MAKES YOU PROUD TO KNOW THAT THESE ARE THE KIND OF PEOPLE THAT MADE THE WEST WHAT IT IS. THE BEST PART, IS'T ALL THE TRUTH. TO ENDURE WHAT THIS FAMILY WENT THROUGH AND THOUGHT NOTHING OF IT, REALLY MAKES YOU STOP AND THINK ABOUT THE LITTLE THINGS WE MAKE SO MUCH OF TODAY. I KNOW THAT THIS IS A TRUE STORY BECAUSE I KNEW THE MAN THAT IS WAS WIRTTEN ABOUT, AND HE WAS A TRUE AMERICAN HERO - EVEN TO HIS BITTER END, THE WORLD LOST HIM IN 1999. THIS BOOK SHOULD BE IN EVERY SCHOOL LIBRARY, IT HAS SO MUCH TO OFFER. IT'S THE BEST.