Arizona Books

Reviewed by Richard R. Blake for Reader Views (9/06)

This is Volume 1 in a series of books that author Charles M. O'Herin is writing to introduce the model railroader and railroad modeler to information about a railroad's history, operations detail, customers, and the flora and terrain along its routes. It is the author's goal to provide enrichment for the individual hobbyist. This volume covers the background and history of the San Diego & Arizona Railway.

O'Herin uses a combination of narrative text and factual information, tables, lists, and a spectacular assortment of enlarged specialized pictures. He also includes an extensive bibliography of additional resources and references for further study and research.

The book is divided into four parts: The historical summary, which covers the building of the railroad, the network in San Diego, and the construction and operational milestones from 1907 through 1919. Part two covers schedules, a time line of and summary of operations, and detailed information as to the rolling stock owned by the company.

Part three details and pictures structures on the railroad line and the industries that provided the revenue sources needed for operations. San Diego city landmarks, like the Santa Fe Depot, illustrate the classic Spanish Mission style of architecture of the era. Part four covers the land features, the flora and terrain.

The story of the San Diego & Arizona Railway covers a one-hundred-year period of history detailing those years immediately following the completion of the first transcontinental railway through the coming of the automobile and trucking industry, the stock market crash, the great depression and the introduction of passenger and freight transport through the Airlines Industry. This had been a difficult and seemingly impossible undertaking for this short line railroad.

The book is thoroughly researched and well documented with referenced end notes for each chapter, a list of figures and photographs, and a list of the credit acronyms used with the photographs.

Every enthusiast of the Western Steam Era standard gauge railroads and modeler fans who use prototypes of deserts, trestles, and tunnels will enjoy the broad range and inspirational approach in this major undertaking by Charles O'Herin.

"Prototypes for Modelers" contains black and white and color photography of breath-taking views, historical buildings, and an amazing photo collection of the railroad's rolling stock making this a valuable collection for any collector's library.

If you have an interest in Storyteller pottery this is probably the most definitive book you will find. It is well illustrated with many photographs of storyteller pottery. Most of the "big name" potters are included. The only problem is, now that you've found the pottery that you like, HOW DO YOU FIND THE POTTER? Problem solved - check out THE NATIVE AMERICAN INDIAN ARTIST DIRECTORY. Find the potter you like in Babcock's book, then look up the name in the index of the Directory and there you have it - name, address, home phone number, maybe even e-mail or website!

Jay Rochlin has turned his PH.D Dissertation into a thoughtful book about the "Arizona Experience"..an insight into the experiences of Minority students at a large public university. This is a "must read" for students of the sociology of higher education. It personalizes the theoretical frameworks of graduate school and puts a face on "the minority student"...too often viewed as a problem to be solved, rather than a person to be valued. Jay is a friend, and an excellent writer..I look forward to more books!.

This is an excellent book. It is well written and easy to read. It discusses the unique role radio played (and to some extent still plays) in the development of mexican nationality. There is extensive discussion of the role of the government in the production and regulation of radio in Mexico and from there ties in theories of nationalism. The major discussion centers between 1920 and 1950. There is some discussion of more recent movements including television; however, the stregnth of the book lies in the eariler years of radio. I found most interesting the discussion of the creation of national music. The conscious effort by the government to create a national music to build pride and solidarity. It works strongly with B. Anderson's ideas from "Imagined Communities". All in all, A great book.

This screenplay by Joel and Ethan Coen reminded me of how much I liked the film shot from it. Perennial criminal Hi returns to prison again and again for robbing convenience stores but Edwinna, the police officer who takes his mug shots, softens his heart. He decides to make a new life of it by marrying her. They buy a trailer in Arizona, set up housekeeping, and try the next logical step: to start a family. Edwinna, though, learns that she cannot conceive and that's where the screenplay takes a typical Coen brother leap into absurdity. Ed and Hi decide to become parents by kidnapping one of a set of quintuplets since "it was unfair that some have so many while others should have so few." What ensures is pure madcap, inventive, hilarious comedy with a hint of the bittersweet.

The screenplay evokes the film with such clarity and excellent visual storytelling that you'll feel as though you're watching it. While Holly Hunter and Nicholas Cage, who played Ed and Hi, excel at portraying quirky characters, this script makes it clear that they had a fantastic script to work with and were not the sole reasons for its success. This paperback contains a few black-and-white still shots of the film (certainly not worth buying the screenplay for), the full credits for the film, and a short interview/exchange between the Coen brothers and the filmmakers for Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn, a movie that was released during the same season.

Sayre's book on ranching and endangered species uses a compact study area, the Altar Valley of Southern Arizona, to analyze various forms of human and 'natural capital.' The book is deep in the area's history, ecology and current resource management practices, and yet also steeped in theoretical arguments that make perfect sense given his overall argument. The Bobwhite Quail plays a central role in producing a landscape of "Nature" (big "N") that becomes the pivot-point for contemporary rural politics between ranchers, environmentalists, and federal agency workers. Really good research, and still accessible; kudos to the author.

Ednah New Rider Weber has what so many authors dream of: an authentic and original voice, and it's put to good use here, sharing a recollection of childhood that is hilarious and chilling in turn, and always honest. This book puts into first person perspective a dark chapter of American history in a way that both chilren and adults can appreciate. I savored her beautiful language, realistic and lively dialogue and knack for pulling together her chapters like the last threads of a perfectly woven cloth. I look forward to reading this book aloud to children in grades 4 and up, and I recommend it as a must-read for anyone interested in Native American history or memoir-writing.

If you're looking for spun sugar literary confection, and easy comfort, move on. But if you want to encounter
poetry that disturbs you in the best possible way, keeps you up at night, demands that you respond with your
heart and your mind, read both Naked Wanting and Raven Eye.

Margo Tamez is a poet whose work is not easy, clearly born of experience raw and real, making the reader touch that place of pain, of personal wounding far, far, away from the romance of the Southwest and the stereotype of the "stoic noble" on the rez. Her writing forces us to look where the bodies are buried, when we want to turn a blind eye to the violence wreaked upon the individual and environment. Both Naked Wanting and Raven Eye gave me that gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach, the tight, clenched first buried in the chest. Bless her for that.

And bless her, too, for somehow still weaving threads of redemption and reemergence in the face of soulbreaking sorrow, for offering real mythos and confronting false spirituality.

In Ceremony of Peyote, there is no easy, pro forma way to reconnect, no perfect prayer that can be prayed. Colonialism and racism have taken their tolls both in daily life and spiritual practice. But this poem reclaims and reframes ritual with afrank, and unvarnished fervor. Tamez refuses to shirk from the distorted in herself, or in her people. But in the boldest move, Tamez' poetry reveals that Spirit still lives, lives deeply for her in the body, in the process of birth and renewal and in the threads of communion that emerge despite everything.

Lisa Alvarado, poet, editor, literary critic
La Bloga [...]
[...]

It is not surprising that the development of the internet and related electronic technologies has coincided with an academic interest in the history of reading. Using and transmitting texts in new ways, scholars have become increasingly aware of the precise ways in which manuscripts and printed books transmitted texts to early modern readers. This volume collects nine essays on reading and literacy in Europe from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries. Topics include: the function of marginalia in vernacular medieval manuscripts; the trope of reading in the fourteenth century; the definition of literacy in early modern England; marginalia and reading practices in early modern Italy; revision of medieval texts in the Renaissance; the prevalence of translated French poetry in sixteenth-century England; the use of poems as props in the plays of Shakespeare; the private reading of the playscripts of masques; and early-modern women's reading practices. These essays demonstrate the energy and excitement of the rapidly developing field of the history of reading. They will appeal to those interested in European cultural history, the transition from manuscript to print culture, the history of literacy, and the history of the book.

This atlas is awesome. It was comissioned by the USAF in the early 1960s to help plan the Apollo manned mission to the moon. The photographs were taken from observatory archives and projected on a curved surface, then rephotographed to simulate what the flat surface of the moon would look like from the Apollo craft in close lunar orbit. This is an atlas of lunar features as viewed from the Apollo spacecraft. A piece of history. Handle it with white gloves if you manage to obtain a copy--but keep it close to your telescope.