New Mexico Books

very good book. read it before I had a vacation in santa fe and i was able to visit places in the book....spooky.

Written by New Mexico resident and novelist M.H. Salmon, Gila Libre! New Mexico's Last Wild River is the true story of a river that has been part of New Mexico's history since ancient times. Prehistoric Native American art, believed to be produced by the Mogollon culture, has been found along the Gila river; since then, Apaches and a wide assortment of mountain men and other rugged characters have considered the headwaters of the Gila to be their home. The Gila region includes the largest national forest in the forty-eight contiguous states, and the only undammed main-stem river currently left within New Mexico. A handful of black-and-white photographs illustrate this thoughtful survey of the Gila's past, present, and potential future - including the threat of a major state and federal water project. Highly recommended.

This book is a detailed history of Glorieta Conference Center. The decision to build the center in New Mexico (as opposed to other states) is discussed. There are numerous pictures of the camp in the early days, 1952 and 1953, when it began holding religious conferences. The history of the conference center is described through the mid-1980s.

Northern New Mexico is, in my opinion, one of the most gorgeous places in America. Seeing this area in the first half of October, when the aspen trees have turned golden, is an unforgettable experience.

Former Virginia slave Gabe is searching for his white aristocrat half-brother, a missing family fortune, romance, and a new identity as a free man in Michael Haley's riveting western novel The Gold Of El Negro. Gabe experiences the cultures of the American Southwest and encounters constant challenges in the post-civil war New Mexico Territory of the 1880s....

Great Cruelties Have Been Reported: The 1544 Investigation Of The Coronado Expedition by historian Richard Flint is a superbly presented, scholarly, detailed historical analysis of not just the Spanish Coronado Expedition into the New World, but also the official investigation by Spanish officials after the Coronado Expedition's two-year duration. Focusing on the primary sources of the extensive documents recording this official investigation, Great Cruelties Have Been Reported unflinchingly surveys and reports the clash between worlds and cultures, the Spanish conquistadors and the Native American peoples. Great Cruelties Have Been Reported is a solid, exhaustively researched, well reasoned, and smoothly written account which is strongly recommended for both academic and community library history collections.

How do books like this break through? The University of New Mexico press is not going to flood the bookstores with multiple copies. This a beautiful book of stories about the old and not so old West. The author presents a series of stories linked by geography and spread over the last century. Witty, full of time and place, and stuffed with interesting people. Great stories well told. Very American in the manner of Twain, Steinbeck, and early Hemingway. Hunting, fishing, drinking, talking. Spend some time with new friends in each chapter.

In the early summer of 1967 a small band of Spanish Americans raided the courthouse in a dusty town in New Mexico to publicize their claim that much of the land in the state had been stolen from their ancestors. The author, who happened to be in New Mexico at the time, was drawn into the events and set out to discover what had happened during the raid, why it had happened, the legitimacy of the raiders' claims, and what sort of person was their leader, Reies Tijerina.

This fascinating and important book presents a moving picture of the impoverished existence of the Spaish Americans whose folk traditions have brought them into direct armed conflict with the state and national governments. Interwoven with the details of the current "war" are the history of the land grant controversy, the life of Tijerina - an evangelist preacher with little formal education but a great vision - and the relationship of the Spanish Americans' actions with the growing militancy of other minority group in the country.

Mr Gardner's personal involvement helped him gain the confidences of the local people on both sides without sacrificing objectivity in chronicling this confounding yet heroic event. He has shown how a revolution begins, and has thoroughly documented the claims and grievances that underlie the struggle of the Spanish Americans and Indians of the Southwest.
--- from book's dustjacket

This book is simply the best book out there on the subject of growing food in the mountains of the Southwest. Author Lisa Rayner is a real perfectionist who goes the extra mile to get her facts straight. In this third edition of her now-classic permaculture text, her attention to detail is beautifully combined with the helpful illustrations of Zack Zdinack into a well-organized guide that has become even more indispensable as the need to grow more of our food locally has become more intense. This book not only explains how to grow food in an arid, high-altitude climate, but also how to do so in a way that works with nature using permaculture techniques. Even if you have never heard of permaculture, you will learn how to follow nature's examples to succeed at growing food in a harsh environment. As with Rayner's other book The Sunny Side of Cooking - Solar cooking and other ecologically friendly cooking methods for the 21st centurythis book on growing food is well researched and contains an extensive list of resources. In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I am the author's husband.

Elliott West has written a highly entertaining book packed with historical information about children's development in the American Far West. West chronicles how children had a different perspective about the West than their parents, how children's contributions allowed for the settling of the region, and how children were shaped by the West in ways that their parents, grounded in traditions from Back East or Europe, never achieved.

Chapters cover children's "First Impressions", their lives "At Home", "Child's Work" and "Child's Play', "Growing Up", "Family and Community", "A Great School House", "Suffer the Children", and "Children and the Frontier." In each, West gives extensive examples and quotations from primary sources left by children to illustrate his points. In "A Great School House," for example, the author describes the creation of educational facilities in the West to show how hungry western pioneers, both adults and children, were for this formal learning.

The conclusion, "Children and the Frontier", summarizes many of West's previous themes and makes broader conclusions about the children's experiences. Unlike parents, sons and daughters were bred for western conditions, whether raising livestock, planting crops, or prospecting for minerals. Their lives reflect the influence of the West on the new generation, as well as showing how the older influences of American life (home, culture, music, education, games) endured.

All in all, I would heartily recommend the book to anyone interested in the western frontier experience, as an antidote to the men-laden images of many western accounts.

Extremely good research and veridic in all aspects, it has helped me in a very extensive way in my own research about my country. My congratulations and thanks to the author of this book Mr.Peter Gerhad
Jose Casas