New Mexico Books

This book has 29 true short stories of people who lived in New Mexico, when it was a territory. Each story is about 2-5 pages long. There are some black and white pictures of these same people included in the book.

What a wonderful book. I particularly liked these were people who lived in New Mexico and that I could look at the pictures of each person as I read about them. This author has certainly done a lot of research. I have read a lot of New Mexico history and this book is gem. Many of the stories were ones that I had never heard before. Because the stories are short, it is easy to pick the book up for 15 or 20 minutes, read a story and put it down without losing your place. I appreciated the humor that Marc Simmons displays through out this book, many of these short stories end on a humorous note.

This is a great book about the people who lived in New Mexico when it was still being formed into a state. It certainly provides a history of New Mexico through a different slant. I enjoyed every minute of reading it. My husband read it and enjoyed it as well.

Unlike other disorienting works by other authors in this field, you can depend on this work to keep you headed in the right direction at all times (or time zones, as the case may be). Just remember to fold properly between chapters (outings?) and always remember that anytime you're going uphill, you're pointed north.

In this Neil Hamel mystery, the death of Neil's distant aunt leaves Neil with a diary and a plane ticket to observe an environmental miracle, the white Arctic falcon. But instead of seeing the glorious falcon, Neil and her birding party see a body flying off a cliff. Little does Neil realize that the trip she decides to take to Montana to see this bird will turn out to be a search for a murderer:

"'It wasn't a falconer, I'm tellin' you. There are plenty of other people around who hated Pederson's guts. The man had it comin' and goin'.' He climbed down from the fence. 'You give my best to March. Goodness is a rough trail, especially where he is. And don't forget to say hello to that girlfriend of his, Kate.' He grinned. 'Now there's a woman with spirit. She can park her boots under my bed anytime she wants to.'"

Van Giesen moves Neil and her mysterious love, the Kid, from Albuquerque: where if the hot sauce isn't burning your throat it has no taste; to the dangerous regions of Montana, where the greatest danger can be anything from a snowstorm that catches the birders unaware; to the horrible traps used on beautiful, unsuspecting, and diminishing animals for profit; to the people themselves, whose motives are hidden by the wide-open skies and mountains. Neil tries to adjust as she sleuths for March, the wrongfully accused ranger. Van Giesen's characters drive the suspense-driven plot; at the same time throwing in quirks of Neil's which make her all the more human. Neil is a lovable neurotic: from her smoking and drinking habits, to her "inappropriate" relationship to the Kid, to her turning her nose up at anything that remotely resembles food. The reader pictures an Ally McBeal galloping around the hillsides with heart and clothes flapping. But somewhere she finds the strength to get the job done, before she resumes her nonconformist lifestyle. Raptor is a delight, and Neil does it her own way.

A very popular mystery writer from Albuquerque, New Mexico, Judith Van Gieson is an author who has a plethora of information on the web, and enough name recognition so that her author bio simply includes the names of some of the catalog of mysteries she has written, including: North Of The Border, Confidence Woman, and Vanishing Point. Van Gieson is

Shelley Glodowski
Reviewer

The Civil War, you might think, belonged to the South, and to the North--but never to the West.
But the Civil War did make it to the West, and it made it to New Mexico, and one Confederate soldier in that war kept a journal.
Don Alberts has done fans of New Mexico's history an enormous favor by editing those journals into this insightful book--"Rebels on the Rio Grande"--a book that brings the war alive in all its fear, violence, tension, stress, and boredom.
From the days of fighting, to the men who led them, to the days of waiting around for something to happen, this book has it all, and is an essential purchase for any New Mexico (or Civil war) historian, whether amateur or professional.
Also, for residents of New Mexico's Sandia Mountains, this book is indispensable, as it contains firsthand 1862 accounts of what the communities of Tijeras and San Antonio (in Bernalillo County) were like, as well as a nice little sketch of what San Antonio used to look like.
It's great.

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

This is an amazing gem. I couldn't put it down. Capt. French managed to live through more wild times and adventures than I would have thought possible. Truly the 'wild west'. Written in an understated tone, with a sense of humor. Some great wild animal encounters/stories in addition to the usual cowboys, Indians, cattle rustlers, train and stagecoach robberies, etc.

I am usually skeptical about collections of poems on a single theme, but Gill's varied perspective and voice have given us something fresh on evey page. Her incisive wit and profound psychological insight are presented with such sublety, power, and seemingly effortless precision, the reader is continually drawn forward into the next poem. Gill's ability to transform hypothetical ideals into tangible personal experience is nothing short of inspirational. This is what poetry should be - philosophical, psychological, and real. This is a work that can truly stand the test of time.

The best of the American Indian myths are works of art, blending form and content into an organic whole that interweaves the great themes of human experience. John Bierhorst's brilliant selection of sixty-four tales - each significant and interesting in itself - present a comprehensive view of a world that will be both familiar and vastly different for "Western" readers.

Over forty cultures, including Navajo, Aztec, Iroquois, and Eskimo, are represented. In addition, John Bierhorst's introduction offers a framework for interpretation according to Freud, Jung, Frazer, and Levi-Strauss, plus an analysis of mythic narrative as a key to reading traditional literature.

The Red Swan is valuable both for its scope and for the superb quality of the stories themselves.
--- from book's back cover.

Jackson's book uses the community of Cochabamba as a case study to examine life in rural Bolivia from colonial times to the present. Relying on archival materials from Cochabamba to develop his analysis, Jackson challenges the tendency to portray Andean natives as hapless victims of modernity. His examination of agrarian, economic, political, and demographic history clearly demonstrates that peasant natives of Bolivia have played, and continue to play, an active role in that nation's development.

Much like Nils Jacobsen's excellent book, Mirages of Transition: The Peruvian Altiplano, 1780-1930, Jackson's book depicts a highly resilient peasant population that continues to flourish despite centuries of exploitation and displacement. This book is an example of how to do research using rural archives. It is a must-read for students of Bolivia and the Andes generally in addition to those interested in demographic or economic history.

Architect Thomas L. Lucero and scholar Thomas J. Steele, S.J. present Religious Architecture in Hispano New Mexico, a slender yet detailed study of the structure and architecture of churches. Setting forth a classification system that can prove most helpful when comparing distinct types of Hispanic religious architecture in New Mexico, Religious Architecture in Hispano New Mexico is filled with black-and-white diagrams and photographs as well as extensive text description, historical summaries, and more. A thoroughly researched and invaluable guide for architecture students, designers, and scholars seeking to better understand the form, purpose and function of Hispanic New Mexican places of worship.