Arizona Books

Good all around trail guide. Includes accurate GPS coordinates. Trail ratings are ok. The trip odometer settings are great if you don't have a GPS.

Good all around trail guide. Nice trip odometer listings for if you do not have a GPS.

[[ASIN:0978563433 Arizona War: A Colton Brothers Saga

This author convincingly brings together turmoil of the Civil War as it reaches the Southwest, the Apache's struggle to hold on to native lands, and the settlers' battle to survive these events while enduring the hash climate and terrain of New Mexico and Arizona.

I couldn't put the book down.

Melody Groves deftly brings to life the Colton Brothers' love for each other and their dedication to family. Her artful insight into each brother's thoughts and their individual responses to severe physical and emotional trials brought, from me, deep sympathy for them.

In particular, Cochise's torture of one of the brothers, James, is recounted in a so point-by-point, excruciatingly real way that this reader's cold heart was wrenched harder than I'm comfortable admitting.

I strongly recommend Arizona Wars.

This is an excellent snapshot of places to go to experience the waterways of Arizona. A well documented little book! I recommend to anyone.

For those who wonder what they are seeing on a casual walk in the desert, this book is very welcome. It profiles 50 wildflowers and makes mention of the locale of dozens more in the course of the text on the 50 hikes. In this way, one can make flower identification moving from the book to the trail or the other way around. The photos, over 100 in all, are of very high quality.

The author, Christine Maxa, is well-informed and concise. By the time you've read through a few of the hikes and profiles, you realize she's every bit as at ease with wildlife as her portrait with an elephant would imply. She shows not only a familiarity with the flowers, but also a wide knowledge of the pollinators and predators and parasites that dwell among them: the cochineal insect, source of the rich red dye prized for centuries by aboriginal Americans and Europeans alike; hummingbirds, which carry pollen on their heads; bees, which carry it on every part of their bodies; forest rangers, which carry the full force of the federal government when charging the spectacular parking fees described in the "Special Considerations" section of the hiking guides.

One of the nice things about learning about desert flowers is that there are relatively few of them, so that one can become well-versed and appear authoritative in a relatively short time. Even so, surprises abound. American carrot, which appears on many of the hikes, is a real carrot of the genus Daucus, though Maxa does not say whether the root is edible. Scorpion weed and rattlesnake weed, despite their ominous names, are benign and pretty, while larkspur, a beautiful type of delphinium, is highly poisonous.

This guide's greatest strength, fittingly enough, is its information. I had wondered in the past whether teddy bear cholla and jumping cholla were one and the same plant. A quick trip to the handy 2-page index of common and scientific names confirmed that it was. This sort of detail may seem simple, but it's often surprisingly hard to come by, given the widespread fear among Americans of Latin binomial nomenclature. And despite the title's reference to Arizona desert, the flowers discussed are by no means restricted to that state. Eleven years ago in the California part of Death Valley I noticed a widespread infestation of a parasite that resembled a tangle of orange string. Thanks to this book I finally know what it was: Dodder (p.134), a plant related to morning glory that lacks leaves and roots and chlorophyll. Of further interest in the profile are two common names for dodder that at first glance seem to describe mutually exclusive traits: love vine and strangleweed.

This Book is a must if you like hiking mountains and live in Arizona or want to visit the state. The book is broken down into areas of Arizona. In the discriptions of the mountains Bob tells how the mountain got its name. He is very detailed about how to get to the top and how to get there and tells if you need the USGS 7.5 minute map for that mountain. This book is not restricted to just mountains, but he also tells how to hike and how to get to some hills. There are quite a few off trail hikes in the book as well. He does not restrict the book to just trail hikes and roads. The only dissapointment in the book is that he did not cover any mountains is Sedona, Verde Valley and did not include much in the Prescott erea. But other then that he shows a wide variety of mountains across the state.

If anything shows Steven Law's versatility as a writer this story does. It has a style that is unique yet the rich characterization comes across as Steven Law's trademark.

The book is smaller than I expected but wow...get inside and it is fabulous and very well organized. Anyone who loves trains and wants a guide for Arizona needs this first.

When this book showed up in the stores I ignored it for a long time, assuming that it was just the history of one army ammunitions depot--and how interesting could this be? But it turns out that this is a first-rate social history, taking place at the intersection of some major subjects of great interest to many, such as Native American culture and World War Two. The Navajo Depot was built near Flagstaff because it had to be on a major railroad line and able to serve West Coast ports, but be safely far from Japanese bombers. By chance this placed it near the heartland of the most vibrant Native American cultures. Thousands of Native Americans worked on the base, including a noticable percentage of the Hopi tribe. Most Native workers were Navajos, and they even built their own hogan village, and they continued some very traditional ways. Many white workers walked straight out of a cowboy movie. The mixing and mixups of white American and Native American cultures on the base are rich in cultural lessons and colorful characters and stories. (For example, R. C. Gorman--the future artist--grew up on the base). Then add a large group of Austrian POWS, and you have all the makings of a 'ship of fools' sort of journey with all its unlikely passengers interacting in unlikely ways. Some of the book's stories are quite entertaining. Portions of the book take place in nearby Flagstaff, but you don't have to know Flagstaff to enjoy this part too, for Flagstaff is typcial of Old West frontier towns and Rt. 66 towns and railroad towns, and some of the social pressures felt in Flagstaff, such as housng shortages and labor unrest, were typical of much of America in the years of World War Two. But there's much that makes this book unique.

I live in the area near the San Tan Mountains so it was really nice to read about what it had once been. I also enjoyed the pictures... especially the one of the Snow covered San Tan's!