New Mexico Books

I have several low-fat mexican cookbooks and find myself using this one the most. Their recipes for corn bread, beans and soup are great.

This is a perfect cookbook! Not only are the recipes mouthwateringly delicious, they are simple and easy to prepare. The ingredient lists are fairly short and readily available at the neighborhood market. Many of the dishes take under 20 minutes to prepare.

Beyond the recipes themselves, the book contains some great reference information. There's a terrific illustrated guide to peppers, a glossary of mexican spices, and helpful hints for general cooking are scattered throughout the book.

This is an amazing value! If you're interested in low fat / high flavor cooking snap this one up!

The text and the photos are nice separately; together they make a masterpiece. This is much more than a coffee table book. It is preserving a way of life. A way of life that, sadly, most of America is far removed from.

Great book to have on the coffee table. Fabulous photos and interesting stories about real life kids and cowboys. I also like to sit and read it with my Grandchildren.

From back cover:

"Maria Sabina, visionary and shaman, has long been celebrated in her native Mexico as an extraordinarily gifted woman. She emerges as a living practitioner of religious customs stemming from pre-Columbian times, and is the fount of wisdoms long thought lost to the world. She was born in Huautla de Jimenez - by her own reckoning over 90 years ago. She still lives there, speaking only her own native Mazatec dialect."

About the author:

"Alvaro Estrada, born to the same village as Maria Sabina, now resides in Mexico City where he makes his living as an engineer and as a journalist. His work in this book is direct oral testimony based on conversations with Maria Sabina in Huautla de Jimenez and on the shamanic chants which she recited in ritual ceremonies."

I spent time with her in the early 70's. Before I was introduced to her, I had no idea who she was. Fancy that. I went to Huautla de Jimenez because a beautiful young woman, in Tampico, had told me to go there if I wanted to "see God". I was in the ministry of tourism, looking at a big map of Mexico. She saw me and remarked, I can see that you are looking for a "very special" map. I said, yes. She said, I can tell you where to go. I followed her advice, met someone who was well acquainted with Maria Sabina, and spent some time with her, participating in and learning about her Velada. Maria was in possession of a very special map, whose pathways she followed when she sang. At that time, I felt as if my entire journey had been conditioned by Strange Attractors to deliver me to this encounter at just this particular moment in time. In the Christian spiritual tradition, which Maria was apart of, there is a concept of a specific moment in time when history is swallowed up by eternity. This book is important for someone who wants a little more background information about her and wants a good translation of one of her veladas. The woman was an existential Saint. The significance of this is hard for sophisticated urbanites to entirely grasp. She was an extremely advanced and individuated master of spiritual healing. When she sang, it was as if her voice shaped space and time in such a way as to draw the perceptible boundary of another, superluminal, dimension. This book provides a little insight into her personal history, but if you are unfamiliar with her original cultural context, you will not be able to read between the lines, which is essential to understanding.

The archives of the inquisition have been preserved in Mexico, including detailed testimony recounting actual conversations. The book reads like a novel but it's history. Cohen must have been truly obsessed in order to do the research and write such a book. It's a compelling read.

The book is very interesting and gives a historical jewish perspective in New Spain during the late 1500's. I became interested in the book because my ancestor Juan Ramirez probably emigrated with Luis Carvajal (Conquistador) in 1580.

This is a book of photographs of the interiors of Churches in Mexico, and their shrines and alters, and saints which adorn them.

Porter's photographs capture a religious grace which is direct, simple, beautiful, and moving. Seeing these pictures gives an outsider into a window on a world in which life may be difficult, but heart and faith are celebrated and strong.

Contiene una amplia colección de fotografías que muestran la gran variedad y riqueza arquitectónica de las iglesias de México, algunas de las cuales son poco conocidas, y que en cierta medida deben su esplendor al sincretismo cultural hispano-indígena. Las fotografías fueron tomadas alrededor de 1956, por el excelente fotógrafo, sobre todo de paisajes, Eliot Porter (quién abandonó la fotografía por la medicina).

It contains a large colection of photos that shows the great variety and arquitectonic richness of Mexican churches, some of them are not well know, and their splendor is in certain way product of the cultural hispano-indian sincretism. The photos were taken around 1956 by the excelent photographer, landscape specialist, Eliot Porter (who quit medicine for photography).

Once in every decade, an author produces a book that provokes debate and sheds light on a topic analyzed from an entirely fresh perspective. Mike Mazarr's Mexico 2005 is just such a book. This work approaches Mexico through a challenging and articulate framework of six global trends, ranging from the changing allocation of human resources to that of human psychology. The author concludes with a series of probable, controversial scenarios in 2005. The book is rich in insights and piques the reader's interest at every turn of the page. Mazarr's lucid writing and wide-ranging, eclectic themes will appeal to students, academics, the business community, government officials, and the media. Anyone interested in Mexico today and Mexico in the 21st century should read this book.

This is an intriguing analytical summary of the major political, economic, and social trends in Mexico. Whether one agrees or disagrees with the author's scenarios or conclusions, there is a lot to learn here and ponder over. If decisionmakers can read only one book on Mexico, MEXICO 2005 would be an excellent choice.

Mike Butterfield's Guide to the Mountains of New Mexico is a rapturous photographic showcase of the natural beauty of New Mexico. Full-color images on almost every other page capture the rainbow hues of the desert, the tenacity of local flora, the glory of sunrise and sunset and the pristine powder of winter snow. Hiker, backpacker, and aspiring naturalist Peter Greene provides text filled with information about the formation of major ranges as well as their recreational opportunities, ecology, true tales of exploration, and pieces of lore. Multiple maps, including a separate fold-out map showing ranges in photographic relief, as well as detailed peak and wilderness lists round out this wondrous guide for armchair travelers and inspiration for outdoor enthusiasts contemplating a New Mexico visit.

As a New Mexcio native I have seen and owned a number of books about the mountains of the State. This book is well organized and laid out and it invites you to take time and learn about all the various mountain ranges available to us in NM. The photography is first class and inspiring in the their own right. I particularly like the organization and format of the book. The size is just right and the information is presented in a way that is fun and just enough to answer all the main questsions without going into an overload of detail. A high quality folded two sided map is included in a back pocket and the map augments the information inside the book. This is a great gift fo people who appreciate the wonders on NM and want to to learn and explore more. Mike Butterfield and Peter Greene have done a great job with the book. Five stars are not enough.

Millie was an ancestor of mine and the story is as factual as any of the family histories have led us to believe. She was a brave child, but true to the heritage of the times. Great book for children, teens, or anyone that may want a brief history of Central Missouri in early times of settlement.

This War of 1812 story about the Missouri frontier might offer an interesting stimulus for studying history, talking about courage, examining the differences of times, and teaching Missouri history. The British and Indian nations attack Fort Cooper, where Millie and other families are staying. Twelve-year old Millie ride to Fort Hempstead to find help. Students should enjoy and learn from this reality-based, interesting story, with hand-drawn pictures.

Few students of literature today have heard of Neith Boyce. But at the dawn of the 20th century, she achieved significant success as a prolific writer of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and drama, in what was distinctly a man's world. In that world she was known as Mrs. Hutchins Hapgood, and at the time Hapgood‚s career eclipsed hers, though he's equally obscure today. Carol DeBoer-Langworthy, editor of The Modern World of Neith Boyce, has resurrected the previously unpublished autobiographical portion of Boyce's oeuvre in a thorough, scholarly presentation.

The three works contained in this volume are an autobiography by Boyce that covers her early years and ends with her marriage to Hapgood; diary entrees from an extended stay in Italy in 1903, during which Boyce rubbed sleeves with such luminaries as Bernard Berenson and Gertrude Stein; and diary entries from 1914, when Boyce, two of her children, Mabel Dodge, and Carl Van Vechten were stranded in Italy at the outbreak of World War I.

Editor DeBoer-Langworthy contributes an introduction with a biographical sketch of Boyce's life that cogently establishes Boyce's place at the forefront of the modernist movement, but left me wanting a bit more detail, such as excerpts or sample plot summaries from Boyce's fictional works. So I wonder if a complete Neith Boyce biography might be the editor's next project. As it is, DeBoer-Langworthy played detective over a twenty-five year span in pursuit of the unvarnished Neith Boyce, and the book's parallel streams reflect its editor's total engagement. There is Boyce's narrative, and there is the narrative of DeBoer-Langworthy's footnotes. The editor's tidbits of historical context and personal anecdote are not to be missed.

In her autobiography Neith Boyce did not make a literary detective's work easier. Apparently traumatized by the early childhood loss of her four siblings to a diphtheria epidemic, which left her temporarily an only child, Boyce took refuge in detachment and invented an alter-ego, whom she called "You" and blamed for all her real or imagined social blunders. This penchant for seeing herself in other than the first person persisted in her autobiography, where she assumes the third person identity of "Iras." She assigns pseudonyms also to family members but is inconsistent in her other references, calling her husband-to-be, for example, by his actual nickname, Hutch. How many years of investigation did DeBoer-Langworthy spend in simply figuring out who all these people were?

The diary entries from 1903 contain juicy gossip about the expatriate literary and art practitioners gathered around Florence. Seemingly ordained to detachment, Boyce embraced its virtues and defined herself repeatedly as an observer. Indeed her descriptions of landscape, art, and architecture are fulsome and vivid. When it came to her fellow humans, this detachment served her a little less well. The gatherings she described tended to be told rather than shown, much attention was paid to dress, and often the lingering impression left by her comments on her companions revealed mainly whether or not she liked them. Here is one of her takes on Gertrude Stein, whom, in fact, she liked quite well: "We enjoyed Gertrude's visit, though she rather got on my nerves at times by her habit of not bathing and wearing the same clothes all the time." The diaries are told in the first person; Boyce is "I" or "me"; but interestingly, when at the end of this segment Boyce learns of her father's death, suddenly she reverts to calling herself Iras.

Eleven years later, on the eve of World War I, Boyce's prose took on greater urgency and immediacy, as the intersection of personal lives and cataclysmic world events lent suspense and plot line to her deft dissection of the barriers to fleeing Italy. Even in her diaries, this episode reveals, Boyce wrote with a true professional's eye to publication. Not knowing if she and her two children would make it out of Italy alive (they did), she nonetheless wrote of wanting the very journal she was writing to get successfully delivered to her husband in the States, destined presumably for the public record.

Throughout the worries of motherhood, the insults of a philandering husband, and the thunder of war, Neith Boyce kept on writing. Congratulations to editor Carol DeBoer-Langworthy for restoring this significant woman‚s life to our attention.

Now that the University of New Mexico Press has published Carol
Deboer-Langworthy "The Modern World of Neith Boyce," scholars and
professors can no longer ignore Neith's immeasurable and major
contribution to the forming of both the feminist movement and the
Modernist movement. The discovery of Neith's autobiography and her
personal diaries by the author is to the Modernists what the discovery of
Zora Neale Hurston's work was to the Harlem Renaissance.

Lawrence was a good traveller in these parts and he spent a lot of time carefully observing the Indians he met along the way. He was particularly interested in the ways of thought of the Indians and their religious beliefs and the ways their ideas differed from yours and mine. On simple concepts like time and distance, for example: "To an Indian, time is a vague, foggy reality. There are only three times: en la manana (morning); en la tarde (afternoon); en la noche (night). But to the white monkey (you and me) there are exact spots of time, such as five o'clock and half past three." The Indian's concept of God was different from ours. "With the Indians...there is strictly no god. The Indian does not consider himself as created and therefore external to God, or the creature of God. There is, in our sense of the word, no God. But all is godly. There is no great mind directing the universe. Yet the mystery of creation, the wonder and fascination of creation shimmers in every leaf and stone... There is no God looking on. The only God there is is involved all the time in the dramatic wonder and inconsistency of creation. God is immersed, as it were, in creation, not to be separated or distinguished. There can be no ideal God." Lawrence does a wonderful job of digging into this exotic culture and explaining to us the significance of Indian rituals and dances. I particularly liked one of his statements: "The Indian is completely immersed in the wonder of his own drama." There is also a lovely example of descriptive travel writing in "Market Day", a chapter that makes you slow down your reading pace to savor the beautiful descriptions of small things like a bird's flight or flowers in a doorway. I guess this is the difference between reading and information-processing, which we do so much of today.

D.H. Lawrence writes like a painter would write were he to. What is most real in the writings of Lawrence is the physical world, and of course the body. Mornings in Mexico is really a slight work but with a charm to it. There is a relating of facts (especially about Indian life and thought) that you would expect from a travel piece but the charm is in the kind of easy sauntering pace that the narrative keeps. That feeling that it is vacation time and there really is no hurry. The house he lives in for his stay in Mexico and the surrounding markets and open fields in which he walks and the balcony he stands on in the morning with parrot are all pleasantly described. It feels like a place you want to be. The way time away should feel. There is a slight mournful air to the fact that the Americans are beginning to spoil the place, it is as if the Americans have brought that intruder time itself into this timeless land. It's not so much the details you will remember as the overall feel of the work. And Lawrence himself. And here he seems at ease, searching as always but not desperately so, which is a nice Lawrence to spend time with.