Southwest Books

This book, with the maps, is a wealth of information about the Santa Fe Trail in Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico. There are narrations keyed to the maps of events and facts of places and events along the Trail

If you're looking for a start, middle and happy ending, keep on looking. This is a hitchhiker's ride on a flat fast road where the journey is the point; the destination is inconsequential. If you're not afraid to suck in the sweet breath of earth or mescal or blossoms or sweat, you'll walk away energized. Bitter and sweet, heartless and poignant, this book confronts like a feral dog. What you get from this encounter depends on where you've been - or more importantly - why you've been there.

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.

The woodcuts are wonderful, but it's the easy-going memories of Willard Clark that make this book so worthwhile. Remembering Santa Fe is about a time before electronics ruled our lives, before clock and car and superhighway of one kind or another crowded out the figurative and literal open spaces in our lives. But Clark's firsthand graphic and verbal depictions of a bygone era are never sentimental; he obviously loved the life he led in pre-WWII Santa Fe, and we can see why. It was a sweet, authentic life, lived close to nature, close to the people around him, and with art. Generations passing along the secrets of their arts and crafts; fishing in a nearby stream; preparing simple but flavorful food; playing guitar with a friend in the moonlight; working in a field; going visiting; building adobes; all are part of the Santa Fe life that Clark's so lovingly and convincingly recorded. It makes me want to find a time machine and join him there.

The writings of Diego de Vargas, commander of the re-conquest of New Mexico after 15 years of terror following the revolt of 1680 are now available in English. This book is a must for anyone interested in New Mexico history. This is history straight from the source through the eyes of the man who created the history.

We are retired and frequently find her three books useful. We have a Vanagon with a bed, and enjoy pulling into a rest stop, and using the facilities. At anytime can take a nap or stretch our legs. Her three books cover all the states west of the Rockies. We previously marked maps with (T) to indicate a rest(Toilet)area, but missed out on so many of them. Her books describe facilities, best access route, crowded or not, and rates each location. Definitely one of our better purchases.

It's a pity this elegant book is now out of print, since it traces the artistic evolution of Mark Klett, one of our foremost American landscape photographers. Combining his knowledge of geology with his interest in photography, Klett saw himself originally as a direct artistic descendant of great 19th Century American photographers such as Carleton Watkins and Timothy O'Sullivan. Indeed, one of his earliest projects was to photograph again the same locales these photographers photographed during their work as official photographers to several U. S. government scientific surveys. Klett's work shows a deep affection and appreciation of the American landscape, especially the Southwest. Yet it is also a series of cautionary visual tales noting how we have inadvertently ruined that landscape through pollution and other signs of human activity. Hopefully this splendid book will be published again soon.

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)

Hands down, the Road Trip books are the best guide books out there. Written entertainingly with humor and actual OPINIONS (that proved extremely helpful and astute). I promise you'll miss very little of interest if you take this book along on the road.

Profusely illustrated with color photography, "Hillside Letters A to Z: A Guide To hometown Landmarks" by Evelyn Corning is a visual travel guide and history of sixty iconic images associated with selected villages, towns, and cities across fourteen western states. From those giant letters on a mountain slope above a town, to iconic memorials honoring historical incidents in American history, the reader is treated to a tour that is as entertaining as it is informative about those curious letters that are carved and/or painted above their associated communities. Very highly recommended for curious travelers making their way through America by car or plane, and enhanced with a list of more than four hundred other known U.S. hillside letters and a map showing letter sites nationwide, "Hillside Letters A to Z" is as informative as it is entertaining as it explores the origins, customs and controversies associated with those sometimes mysterious but always fascinating community icons representing their schools and towns.