Arizona Books

For anyone interested in wildlife, birds, and stories of survival....this is the perfect book. It's an amazing blend of facts about the natural history of the California Condor and the personal accounts of a biologist who dedicated several years of her life ensuring that the condors were successfully reintroduced to their historical range in the Grand Canyon. The photos are spectacular and the writing is absolutely beautiful. The book gives you a very personal look at the myriad challenges and rewards associated with the restoration of an endangered species. I highly recommend it.

Every so often a book comes along that makes you feel good and offers a glimmer of hope for the environment. This is such a book.
The California Condor is a magnificent bird, the largest flying land bird in North America with wingspans reaching 9.5 feet. There was a time, 10,000 years ago, when the Condor soared in abundance above the canyonlands of the American southwest, including the Grand Canyon. However, over time they began to disappear until in the early 1980s there were only 22 remaining in the wild. By 1987 the last wild Condor disappeared. Even today there are only 141 living in the wild, primarily in northern Arizona, southern Utah and California.
This book is about the near extinction of the bird and the heroic efforts of biologists and other dedicated individuals to ensure the survival of the species. The successful implementation of a controversial captive-breeding program that has resulted in the reappearance of the birds in the Grand Canyon and Vermillion Cliffs along the Arizona Strip in Northern Arizona after a 70-year absence has given hope that the species will return to its rightful place in the ecosystem. It is a story that is inspiring, bittersweet,and will leave you cheering for these magnificent creatures.
I personally viewed Condors at the Grand Canyon a few years ago and Osborn's descriptions of the visual impact of again seeing these birds are right on target. It is truly a sight to remember.
In addition to a splendid narrative there are photographs that surely will be made into a picture book. The photo on page 77 of a Condor in the Grand Canyon is worth the price of the book alone.
The book has been called the only book of its kind and that is surely true. I know of no other on the subject that makes such compelling reading and provides evidence that humankind can save endangered species, given dedication and cooperation among the myriad interests involved. A wonderful book.

I've used a number of recipes from this delightful little book, and never been disappointed. Engels/Thorpe present do-able recipes that work every time, using simple mostly on-your-shelf ingredients (at least if you live in the southwest, or live near an ethnic market.) I hope they will collaborate on another cookbook -- these recipes are much too good to be lost!

This is a delightful little book filled with recipes and family stories the authors grew up with. Records a way of life and a way of cooking that can raise the cultural awareness of all Americans! Great book!

Both of my children (ages 5 and 7) and I love this book. It is well written, amusing, creative and informative. The format is fun and inventive -- Prickly Pete (a packrat) makes a series of statments about desert creatures and then asks the readers guess whether each one is a fact or a "cactifract"(untrue), before turning the page to find the correct answer. My children love guessing and learning whether they were right. I recommend it for its entertainment value as well as for the information it contains about the natural hsitory of the desert.

Correctamundo!: Prickly Pete's Guide To Desert Facts & Catifracts separates desert facts from "cactifracts", that is, things lots of kids think are true about the desert but are not factual. Lively, fun, educational, and highly recommended for both school and community library collections, Correctamundo! will provide young readers ages 8 to 12 with a splendid and entertaining introduction to the flora and fauna of the desert.

This is the best autobiographical book on a cowboy's life that I've ever read, and I've read quite a few. It's a fun read by a humble man with an attention to everyday detail that is often missing in such books. Cowboying, mining,ranch life, hunting lion and bear with hounds, living outdoors, homesteading, working alongside Apache cowboys, and interesting perspectives on early Arizona towns are all covered here.
This book is a keeper, one I read every couple years, and enjoy it more every time. It's darn good. His second book, More Tales from Slim Ellison, is very good also, but I think this book should be read first. If you read "More Tales" and like it, rest assured you will enjoy "Cowboys Under" even more. If you enjoy Slim's books you might try another called "From Thunder to Breakfast" by Hube Yates. He was a man well loved here in the town of Cave Creek AZ, and like Slim, you'll wish you'd known him afer reading his book.

slim ellison wrote these words and stories long before i was born here in arizona. in fact, his narrative begins in apx 1888-while the infamous pleasant valley range war was just winding down. slims grandfather col. jess ellison and father pearly are featured prominently in his stories-and both of these men were involved in the fighting. slim was there for grizzly fights, encounters with the outlaw apache kid, droughts, fires, floods, and worst of all civilization that followed completion of theodore roosevelt dam in 1912. slims stories focus on northern gila county-the vast and wild country just below the mogollon rim that zane grey made famous in his prolific fiction. other authors have written great books about arizonas cattle country but i can honestly state that this book is the best ever written by one who was there. vive arizona. biglakejake@hotmail.com 12/11/99

Indeed crime seems to have pay for Mr lane. In elegant prose he recalls the many crimes, often bizare stories of some Arizona's citizens. who surely must have liked the hot climate, since he found so many of them there. The picture on the front page of Dillinger, is chilling,but still I could see how he could have held the attention of the ladies, he certainly was one good looking villain! But finally the story I liked best, was the one about Pia Machita, the Indian Chief who after spending some times in American jails, (with all their comforts,) decided to become a model citizen.

Well worth reading!

John Dillinger, Public Enemy #1, snarles from the cover of this engaging book--a mug shot taken when the "podunk" Tucson Police Department arrested him in 1934. Rogers, one of Arizona's top historians, writes with uncommon flair and solid scholarship. He is also one heck of a storyteller, as evidenced by his account of Eva Dugan who lost her head (literally) to a hangman's noose; Winnie Ruth Judd, the so-called "Trunk Murderess," who was said to have hacked up a body and stuffed it into a steamer trunk; and evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, who turned up in Arizona after staging her own kidnapping. This is a terrific book and a great read. Rogers has written another winner.

Mr Shelton rises to the top of my heroes. My heroes are those that rise above their accomplishments to help others reach inside themselves to gain self worth and to reach their own accomplishments. All great teachers bring a sense of hope to their students, a sense of their own worthiness. To leave the confines of his own comfortable academia, Mr Shelton brings his entire heart and soul to the rescue of men without much hope, in his walk across the yard! Every teacher should read this book and discover their own worth!

I encourage anyone wanting to know more about prison and prison arts to read this book. Shelton is such an honest reporter. He tells us about his initial morbid curiosity when asked to "read the poetry of a monster" - an attitude he's now ashamed of - and the desperation he felt when witnessing unexpected horrible consequences for some of his prisoner students as they became poets. He tells us about institutional stupidity and the subversion he found he had to use in order to get anything good done inside. Especially he tells us about the dozens of men he worked with inside, many of whom are now well-published writers (see Ken Lamberton's "Time of Grace" mentioned on this page). "Crossing the Yard" is both moving and unadorned (honest, straight-forward). I'm so grateful for this book.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN, some 1.4 billion people live in farm families that are largely self-provisioning in terms of seeds. In recent years, the skill and knowledge applied to the management and improvement of farmer-varieties has become more fully appreciated. Farmers have been found to employ taxonomic systems, encourage introgression, use selection and breeding techniques, multiply seeds, field test, record data, and name their varieties. It was not so long ago that these farmer-varieties were referred to, in scientific literature, as "primitive" or even "Stone-Age" varieties. They are still referred to by the rather disembodied term, "landraces."

The concerted collection of these materials for conservation and use in modern plant breeding preceeded by some decades any efforts to conserve or use the knowledge farmers had about their materials. Virginia Nazarea's book is at once a warm and loving tribute to farmer-innovators, and a practical guide to the study of "indigenous" knowledge of farming systems and farmer-managed biodiversity. She connects plants to people in ways readers will find difficult to forget, and shows that the existence of diversity in crops is linked with the health and diversity of human cultures. In a sense, they have co-evolved with each other.

Nazarea's field research focused on how people farm sweet potatoes in Bukidnon, Phillipines. In the course of this research she was able to collect 89 sweet potato varieties. Her book offers a detailed account of these varieties and their management. One particularly interesting table provides a compendium of indigenous cultural management beliefs and practices, and comments on each by a plant pathologist, entomologist, agronomist, plant breeder and plant physiologist. The result is fascinating and revealing. In response to the observation that Holy water is mixed with some cuttings so God will watch over and protect the crop, the plant pathologist replies, "purely fanatic," while the plant breeder comments that "water will be good for the cuttings."

Most important, the field research was a test of methodology. This is where the book shines. Nazarea offers a well-conceived, practical, step-by-step guide to researchers who wish to examine the interaction between traditional farmers and their crops. Though Nazarea is an anthropologist by training, this guide, interestingly and uniquely, will be equally valuable to social scientists, ethnobiologists, and agricultural scientists (particularly plant collectors and breeders). Nazarea is clearly sensitive both to the local needs and feelings of farmers as well as to aspirations and needs of researchers. The result is highly useful. In one light volume, the researcher has a complete and rigourous methodology laid out, from the types of questions to ask, to how to ask them and to whom. With slight modification to suit particular circumstances, most researchers may need little else to undertake work in this particular field.

Nazarea's "big" thesis is that "preserving local knowledge pertaining to traditional varieties of crops is complementary, and in many respects indispensable, to the maintenance of the genetic diversity of these crops." Some may argue that she falls a little short in proving its indispensability. Nevertheless, she is on solid ground, genetically and socially, when she demonstrates the importance of on-farm management and what she calls "memory banking" of indigenous knowledge. Equally, she is convincing in arguing that ex situ (genebank) and in situ (on-farm) conservation and management of genetic resources are complementary strategies. Nazarea's contribution is to the latter, both by providing a methodology for research, and an engaging, delightfully-written case study of its application. This is a book without peers in its field.

Literature on indigenous knowledge tends to be long on trendiness and idealism, but short on solid method and results. Nazarea's book is a refreshing corrective by offering a distinct operational program. Nazarea lays out a program for conserving cultural knowledge, step-by-step, with practical examples from one who has been in the trenches. The staggering loss of biodiversity is not just a biological loss, but a loss of human and cultural proportions. Nazarea makes the critical link between nature and culture: when plants go extinct, so does cultural memory. Not only does the world lose an inventory of plant materials, but it also losses a storehouse of knowledge for growing and using plnats. The implication is that attempts to store genetic materials in seed banks is a sterile and half-hearted exercise, because the loss of the cultural, adaptive knowledte has grave consequences for the future of the human species. Nazarea goes to the people at the margins for answers, and in the process, she turns science on its head, proclaiming that "diversity is actually the natural state of things." In that regard Nazarea's work is destined to become an anthropological classic, pointing the direction for the discipline for the next century. Nazarea breaks new ground in decision-making theory by showing the pitfalls of microeconomic models that assume farmers make either-or choices when selecting a course to follow. Instead, farmers use multiple criteria in making cropping decisions in order to spread out the risk against uncertainties of the growing season. This is a sophisticated decision-making process that defies the neat formulations of formalized economic models. In the end, Nazarea documents that women are the best safeguards of indigenous knowledtge through comaraderie and sharing. An experimental in situ conservation program run by the male hierarchy collapsed, but spouses and female relatives took up the work to maintain the plots. If Nazaarea's book is a defense of fuzziness, as she puts it, then less-defined, less-formalized structures of women may also be the best hope for preserving indigenous knowledge.

This lavishly illustrated, large-format "coffee-table" book would make a good showing in anyone's living room--even if it is never read. On the other hand, it provides the most succinct and informative descriptions of the Desert Southwest's major prehistoric native cultures that I have ever read. With this single volume, anyone interested in the ancient cultures of North America can acquire a basic understanding of the Southwest's major five: Anasazi, Mogollon, Salado, Hohokam, and Sinagua. Cheek provides all the information a person needs to know in order to begin learning about these fascinating groups of people.

Descriptions of each culture, along with major archaeological sites representing each, as well as respectable interpretations of major archaeological findings blend to form an indispensible resource for any student of prehistoric North America. I wish I had found this book years ago.

I just thought I'd say a word about my liking this book very much. I am very interested in the indians from the thirteenth century, and this book did a wonderful job of presenting the information extremely well.

David Muench's book is fantastic. I bought this book to give to friends in Europe to show off Arizona, and I couldn't have picked a better book. Everyone has seen pictures of the desert or the mountains, but Muench brings attention to the subtle details of the landscape. I also appreciated that the book didn't just show the desert, but all parts of Arizona. You can't go wrong with this or any of Muench's other collections.

David Muench, the dean of American landscape photogrphers explores a very novel idea - look at the big picture and then the small picture within. It reminds us to look for the little things and find great beauty within. Lawrence Cheek is a gifted writer whose prose matches Muench's genius with a camera. What a spectacular gift book!

1 Star for the old version, 5 stars for the new version.

There have been several new and improved editions of this book from Tucson Audubon Society. It now goes by the name "Finding Birds in Southeast Arizona" with a 2004 copyright.

Highly recommended.

The newest edition of "Russell and Davis" was released on March 20, 2004, and will be an essential part of every Arizona birder's kit: revised and expanded text, completely new seasonal bar graphs, appealing photographs.