Arizona Books

As novice birdwatchers, this book was indispensable for planning our birdwatching trip to SE Arizona. It gave specific locations to visit for birds that you could expect to see there. Directions were clear and concise. With help from this book, we saw nearly every bird species we had hoped to see. This book is a must for this region!

This is a great book for day hikers. The hikes are organized by area, the descriptions of the hikes are accurate, and the directions to the trailheads are complete. If you are someone who likes to take your time on a hike or stop and take lots of photos add an extra hour or so to the time listed for the hikes. I like to hike very early - there were some trailhead parking areas that did not open until 8 or 9 am! There was no place to park other than the trailhead parking so we had to scramble to find other hikes. Check out times the night before if you like to leave for a hike at 6am.

This book is intended to be nothing more than a refutation of Richard Walker's "Human Cost of Communism in China." It is clear that Shalom succeeds brilliantly in picking apart Walker's study and demonstrating that it is nothing but right wing propaganda. But why should we read Shalom's monograph? Since Shalom wrote it in 1984, our understanding of the Maoist era has changed so much that everyone would dismiss Walker's book. Out of the 60 million or so deaths Walker estimates, 15-30M come from killings in the early 1950s and 15-30M come from the anti-rightist witch hunts directly preceding the great leap forward. On the other hand, 1 million deaths are estimated for the great leap forward famine, which is as much an underestimate as the previous two are overestimates!

However, while Walker's study can be relegated to the dustbin of poorly done anticommunist histories even without Shalom's meticulous debunking, there is still good reason to read this. Right wing Mao haters like Jung Chang or R.J. Rummel can maintain a sense of superficial realism in their death estimates, but they borrow from the same bag of tricks as other propagandists like Walker. And of course, Shalom's book makes it easy to see their sleights of hand and gives one the tools to refute them. For example, the best chapter by far is Shalom's discussion of prison camp death rates. The main original contribution of the book (unrelated to merely debunking other accounts) is his estimation of death rates in these camps. There is really no data on this, but Shalom discovers an ingenious way to make an estimate. We know how many "rightists" were arrested in the 1950s and how many were released in the 1970s. Even if one assumes that everyone who didn't die in prison was released then, the death rate is still much lower than that posited by propagandists. Of course, there were many survivors released earlier or later, and this group's death rate was probably higher than the average prison death rate as they were in during the GLF. Rummel, The Black Book of Communism, and others make use of ridiculously high death rates without any evidence. Jung Chang and John Halliday don't do any analysis of statistics, but assert that descriptions of conditions imply a 10% annual death rate! This seems reminiscent of the flawed comparisons to the USSR (whose prison camps have better statistics) that Shalom debunks.

Also of interest is his discussion of language used by officialdom when discussing deaths. Most historians assume that when officials (or Mao himself, in one famous example!) say someone is "liquidatd" they have been killed. Shalom marshalls in a number of cases in which someone who has definitely NOT been killed is refered to as "liquidated."

This book is a treasure. Mr. Van Dyke obviously has the soul of a poet, and within his graceful prose he paints vivid and soul-stirring pictures of some of the most beautiful places on earth. He describes in fine detail observations he made on a long trip, on horseback in 1898/99, over, around, and through the lower deserts of Arizona and California. He leaves no stone unturned as he describes the magnificence and beauty of each aspect of the desert, and pulls no punches in his criticism of man's destructive intrusions. To Van Dyke, the play of light and shadow, the star-pocked night skies, the ragged and jagged ranges of mountains, the perfectly adapted plants and animals, the sometimes shifting sands, and the silent river barrier known as the Colorado are each part of the unique sum which is, in its own harsh and angular way, a paradise of color, form, and life: "The Desert."

Speaking as one who has lived on and wandered through this same desert for nearly forty years, I can attest to the accuracy of Van Dyke's physical descriptions and, perhaps more importantly, I can note that I've found here both the magic and the majesty which he so ably describes. Still, this isn't a book for everyone. Those who prefer the gleam of glass towers and the roar of jet planes to flaming sunsets and yapping coyotes, save your money. Van Dyke wrote, "Not in the spots of earth where plenty breeds indolence do we meet with the perfected type. It is in the land of adversity ... that finally emerges the highest manifestation."

He was right, and he leaves us "The Desert" as evidence.

A wonderful book on Los Cabos by a woman who obviously loves the place. It's well written, it has elegant drawings by the author and excellent photos by her husband, Herman H. Zwinger. In fact it's by far the best book in English on Los Cabos, with coverage of the plants and animals, fish and birds, ocean and desert, mountains and arroyos. A lot of the area's history is woven in and out of the book and in the appendix is a great chronology of Baja (including the capture in 1587 of the Spanish galleon Santa Ana by Thomas Cavendish at Cabo San Lucas), and painstaking lists of the plants, birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians of the Cape Region.

The Desert is No Lady is a book of careful scholarship about a much neglected subject, and is also a work of love. The authors have gathered the voices of 19th and 20th century women -- Hispanic and Native American as well as white -- who found their inspiration and muse in the severe but haunting beauty of the southwest US desert. The voices that emerge here collectively invite the reader into her or his own "center of boundless desire" (p. 29). The voices woven together unify body, place, and spirit in evocative detail. This book is an academic resource, but is far more than that: it is pure poetry!

This was another purchase that is a must have for anyone that loves the Desert Southwest and Sedona. What can one say of one of the most beautiful places on earth. The Red Rocks and the homes and scenery are magic.

Great purchase!

I have this book, but it was published in 1990. In other words, I do not have the revised and updated version.

However, if this one is anything like the copy I have, it is wonderful. The full color pictures are lovely and are used to enhance the text.

Although this book doesn't tell the history of these states, it visits historic places within each state. Much of the history of these four states (NM, AZ, NV, UT) is told through the landscape and historic buildings of each state.

I have enjoyed every place that I have visited and my visits have only been enhanced by using this book as a resource in my travels.

Large, crisp, vivid photos presented by Arizona Highways. Each wildflower includes information such as: region, elevation, blooming season, relatives and more. As an avid Arizona hiker I get excited when I am able to spot these beauties on the trail. The format is magazine size. All pages are thick and glossy Arizona Highways quality. - Beautiful!

...lays out new directions for the most pressing problem of our time: How we live. The basic premise is that the physical design of homes, buildings and streets helps or hurts the people who live there and that we cannot continue to use the land to build the kind of infrastructures we are putting in place. A practicing architect with impeccable credentials, Swaback not only set down the reasons why, he also lays out imaginative, practical guidelines for new and better ways to live. The following quote from the book points up the troubled feeling for the quality of life in America shared by many:

Americans sense that something is wrong...we drive by gruesome tragic suburban boulevards of commerce, and we are overwhelmed at the fantastic, awesome, stupefying ugliness of everything in sight-fry pits, big box stores, office units, lube joints, carpet warehouse, parking lagoons, jive plastic townhouse clusters, signs, the highway itself, clogged with cars as though the whole thing had been designed by some diabolical force bent on making human beings miserable."

The root cause of the problem, according to Swaback, is the outmoded apparatus we have put in place to control land use called "zoning." He describes it as a fragmented, uncoordinated process that begets endless sprawl. Zoning laws promote the self-destructive babbles of pro-growth, slow-growth, or no-growth; they also perpetuate endless political infighting and acrimony, but never solve the problem of proper land use. Through examples and case histories, he snows that the cost of sprawl will eventually overwhelm us because it is the harbinger of more pollution and ongoing, declining community values.

Solutions to population growth and density are complex and not easy to come by, by Swaback believes we can must develop more wholesome living environments,. He proposes "Micro Communities" in open space with connected corridors. New stand-alone communities would be situated on dedicated spaces o varying size with a minimum of forty acres or more. All would include single-family homes, condominiums, schools, offices, light manufacturing, support services, and government centers within walking distance of home on tree-shaded pats and bicycle trails. For the more adventuresome, there is a centralized car pool, and public transit.

The author makes a strong case that living center clusters reduce air pollution, traffic congestion, and the rising cost of building, not to mention widespread social deterioration created by sprawl. Micro communities are pedestrian-centered therefore more likely to develop the human qualities of the inhabitants for tolerance and cooperation because we frequently meet our fellow man face to face as neighbors. Culturally, this new design concept encompasses facilities for all levels of education, participation in music, drama, appreciation for architecture, writing, crafts, visual arts, dance, film, theater,and whatever new forms of culture evolve.

Swayback is a practicing architect and original thinker who has mastered the art and disciplines of this craft. In Designing The Future he has used his considerable skills to conceive new and better ways to live by designing an environment that encourages us to become better human beings. His message: Before it's too late, we had better decide whether we are going to ad to American's wealth or systematically destroy all we have been given.

Vernon D. Swaback, AIA, AICP, is the owner-manager of Swaback Partners, a 21-year old Artichectural-Planning organization in Scottsdale, AZ. He moved to Arizona from Chicago in 1957 to become Frank Lloyd Wright's youngest apprentice and remained with the Wright organization 21 years. Designing The Future was published by Arizona State University's Herberger Center for Design Excellence and is in demand as an architectural text throughout the world.

Reviewer's Note: It is this reviewer's opinion Designing The Future is deserving of best-seller status because of its original, perceptive ideas about a gigantic environmental problem which is reducing the quality of life in America.