Arizona Books

If you are looking for a copy of this item, please contact me at P.O. Box 612, Lewistown, MT 59457

A strange occurrence - coming upon a self-epiphany while thousands of miles away from what it's about. It's what strikes Ernest & Magdalene in "The Region of Lost Names". On separate trips, the two discover their true thoughts about their families and begin to think about them- and the past mistakes of their parents. Faced with this thought, they turn to repair the mistakes of the past in this deftly written tale of a family dealing with itself. "The Region of Lost Names" is highly recommended and a top pick for community library fiction collections.

Translated with an informative introduction and extensive notes by David Marsh (Professor of Italian, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey and a specialist in Renaissance Studies), Renaissance Fables: Aesopic Prose By Leon Battista Alberti, Bartolomeo Scala, Leonardo Da Vinci, Bernardino Baldi presents the first English renditions of fables by Alberti, Scala, and Baldi, as well as brand new translations of Leonardo's fables. Written in the 1400's and 1500's, these classic allegorical stories, often epigrammatically short, rely heavily upon symbolism and the world of nature to mirror issues of human society at large. The writings are presented in their original Italian as well as in English, and offer encapsulated pieces of human wisdom as well as timeless ponderings of thought. A highly recommended contribution to classical literature and folklore shelves.

Playing off the double entendre in the title of her book, Beth Reingold examines the representative nature, action, and effectiveness of women legislators. "Are women in public office simply women who represent, or are they also women who represent women? And what about the men in public office-do they represent women? Do they represent women to the same extent their female counterparts do"(2)? Reingold researches legislative records, conducts extensive personal interviews, and issues surveys to male and female legislators of California and Arizona in order to deconstruct popular views of female/male representation.

By defining, dissecting, and finally, dismissing the"strategy of difference" (what legislators attribute to legitimize women's positions in legislation) in chapter 1, Reingold is able to prove that there are no significant differences between the representing behavior of men and women legislators (243). In fact there are more similarities, than there are differences.

Utilizing Hanna Pitkin's (1967) work, The Concept of Representation, as a framework, Reingold further reveals that in "neither [the California nor Arizona] legislature was being female (descriptive representation) a guarantee of attitudes and activities associated with women (substantive representation)"(30, 243). Men and women have an equal opportunity to effectively represent women.

Reingold research proves that "descriptive representation was, as a criterion for substantive representation, neither absolutely necessary nor always sufficient" (243). These findings indicate two things: (1) men are able to fairly and successfully represent women, regardless of the lack personal or bodily connection (i.e. abortion); and (2)women representatives do not always make a difference for women adequately or justly. Reingold is quick to say that it does make a difference that women hold public office,even if the importance only lies in increasing the numbers.

Beth Reingold's research and findings brilliantly challenges the foundations of gender politics and expectations in America.

63 trails along the Mogollon Rim are well covered. Stevenson is a mapping genius. His elevation profiles prepare the biker before the trip. The accuracy is unbelievable. I highly recommend. Great book!

From Front Jacket:

"'There is nothing else quite like it,' writes David Lavender, 'a deeply entrenched water corridor 280 miles long through a desert wilderness of almost overwhelming beauty. No other American river offers, in one unbroken stretch, as great an aggregation of rapids.'

When John Wesley Powell ran the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon in 1869, he did not have such forewarning - nor may he have suspected how many others would follow in his wake. Taking to the river by boat has become as much a lure to adventurers as climbing a mountain 'because it's there,' and guided trips through the Canyon now test the mettle of 15,000 brave souls every year.

Today's river rats are linked to Powell by a colorful chain of individuals who braved then-unknown perils of water and rock. David Lavender has traced this history of adventure, beginning with legendary prospector James White who might even have preceded Powell through the Canyon when he was forced to flee Indians on a makeshift raft. A subsequent century of river running has seen the exploits of such individuals as Robert Brewster Stanton, who wanted to build a railroad through the Canyon's Inner Gorge and lost three men in his surveying expedition; trapper Nathaniel Galloway, who perfected a technique for running rapids - by entering a rapid with his boat stern first; the Kolb brothers, who made the first films of running the river; and Georgie White, the 'Woman of the River,' who by introducing rubber rafts ushered in the modern era of river running."

From El Planeta Platica Lawrence Taylor and Maeve Hickey's The Road to Mexico (University of Arizona Press, 1997) offers a delicious narrative and evocative photos on the blue highways stretching from Tucson, Arizona to Magdalena de Kino, Sonora. "The Old Nogales Highway is a road, like the fabled Route 66, shares in an American romance different from that of that of the interstate. Here, the up-to-date sits awkwardly, unstylishly cheek by jowl with the embarrassingly eccentric and the downright ugly." (p. 58) Proving that travel is best enjoyed when it's not rushed, the authors take time to talk to the people who live in the Sonoran Desert. Anthropologist Taylor quotes a wide range of people from American Automobile Association clerks "Lots of cars get stolen down there" to muralists to cattle ranchers. The book finds its voice in this regional chorus and turns its focus on picturesque characters, such as the U.S.-borne mariachi who won't cross the borderline: "Fernando was not about to risk the Mexico of his imagination, of his mariachi, by penetrating that border. He would consider flying over it, landing in the center of the nation, in the Guadalajara of Mariachi Vargas, but Fernando Sanchez was not going to take the road to Mexico." (p. 9)

James Snead's Ruins And Rivals: The Making Of Southwest Archaeology presents the story of archaeology in the Southwest from the 1890s to the 1920s. Two major research traditions are scrutinized and compared - expeditions sent from major eastern museums, and those supported by archaeological societies based in the Southwest. Ruins And Rivals reveals how competition between institutions and those who espouse them has shaped modern Southwest archaeology. Eastern "museum men" and Western boosters all used archaeology for the approval of wealthy patrons, the advancement of their careers, and even their own personal glory sometimes at the expense of others. Ruins And Rivals is fascinating as a look into the foibles of the human psyche, as well as into the history of the Southwest. Highly recommended.

Ann Zwinger is a peerless writer. Each paragraph, sentence, and word is like a drop of sunlit dew; sparkling and yet sublime. You need a dictionary sometimes, but her great use of the King's English raises your consciousness without being tiring or boring. Each sentence invites a tour to the next, just as Zwinger's favorite river, the Green River in Wyoming and Utah, always seems to have just one more tantalizing view around the next bend.

Mrs. Zwinger combines notes from several trips on the Green into a single, seamless narrative traversing the river from its source to its meeting with the Colorado. The only areas left out are the Fontanelle and Flaming Gorge reservoirs, which are but temporary vandalizations by the Bureau of Reclamation.

The book visits the river both from a naturalist's and a historian's viewpoint, with plenty of metaphors and visualization of an an almost lyrical nature included. It is never-ending delight to read Mrs. Zwinger's loving prose about one of the few still partially wild places in our country. You can close your eyes every paragraph or two, and be magically transported to the scenes and events she unfolds. The book also has a gently humorous quality, as when Mrs. Zwinger describes clouds of mosquitoes, and losing a Dutch oven in the murky water.

Mrs Zwinger's knowledge of geography is absolutely correct when she points out that the Green River is the true master stream of the Colorado watershed, and that only a historical accident has resulted in the former "Grand" river being renamed as the "Colorado".

I should note that the author is also a gifted artist and cartographer. Her maps at each chapter's start are excellent guides, and her numerous charcoal sketches of plants, birds, tools such as the old Green River knife, and the like, more than make up for lack of photographs in the book. Indeed, such would only be distractive.

Mrs. Zwinger's last sentence in the book, penned as the Green River meets the Colorado at the foot of Stillwater Canyon, reads "I do not want to hear the river ending." This is an apt sentiment as applied to her book as well.

This was one of the first books I ever read on the West. Since then, I hunt up and read everything she writes. I have never been disappointed. You may wish to read ""Wind in the Rock" and "The Mysterious Lands", among others. I close by simply stating that any library that doesn't have this fabulous book on the West, the river, and the human spirit, is incomplete.

The late Morris K. Udall, Jim McNulty's friend from college, was once described as being "too funny to be president." Reading this book, I realized that McNulty was too decent to be a long-term congressman. He lasted only two years. Mo Udall, another decent man, lasted for 30, defeated only by Parkinson's, but he was an exception. McNulty, an Irishman from Boston, practiced law and made a heavily Mormon area of Arizona his political base for nearly half a century. "Running Uphill" is an interesting tale of his service in the Arizona Senate, his political work for both Morris and Stewart Udall (JFK's interior secretary) his near-defeat of Barry Goldwater for a U.S. Senate seat and his decision to join the Peace Corps at an age where most men sign up instead for golf or shuffle board. Through it all, you realize that this is an honest, honorable and considerate man whose reward for a good freshman term in the U.S. House of Representatives was a narrow loss to a challenger who ran a negative campaign. McNulty may have been too nice to stay in Congress, but Arizona and the nation are better for his having chosen to serve the public.