Mexico Books

Loved this book and all the wonderful plates of Mexican Folk retablos. Gives a comprehensive review that will answer questions and inform the average reader. Highly recommend.

I can't believe this is the 1st review...This inspirational, beautifully put together book was awesome. The research into the art work alone, is masterful. Then Ms. Giffords tells you a story about the pictures content and the symbolism in each artists work. This book alone, has inspired me to delve further into the lost art of retablos' and the lives of the saints. I recommend this book to art students, theologians, and anyone interested in igniting their sprituality!!!

This book isn't large, but it's full of the incredible beauty of Mexican folk art with 82 color illustrations. It's well written, very detailed, and in three sections.

Part 1, "The Mexican Folk Retablos": The origins of these small religious oil paintings, usually on tin, are described, as well as terminology, materials, the artists (mostly unknown), and much more. The chapter is completed with 28 images of the Holy Family, and each plate is described on the facing page. The wonderful piece depicted on the cover, "La Inmaculada", is one of them.

Part 2, "Saints as Subjects": This starts with the problem of identification, as finding out which saint is pictured is quite a feat. It goes into the function of these retablos, and their changing popularity as time progressed. It concludes with 36 images of saints, that are inspiring and beautifully executed. I find # 31, "San Antonio de Padua", extraordinary.

Part 3, "The Mexican Ex-Voto Painting": An ex-voto is a story painting, done as a commemoration to answered prayer. This chapter deals with the characteristics of these lovely pieces, their development and decline. It gives 17 examples of this unique art form, along with a description, as well as a legible printing of the writing on the painting, in Spanish and English. The back of the book has bibliography, notes, indexes, etc.

If you appreciate Mexican art, this will be a wonderful addition to your library, and if you like Russian icons, as I do, it makes a fascinating comparison, especially plate # 4, "Nuestro Señor de los Trabajos", and plate # 62, "Santiago", pictured with sword in hand and on horseback.

The author, Gloria Fraser Giffords, has done a marvelous work with this volume, bringing us an area of Mexican culture that doesn't get as much attention as it deserves.

Gloria Fraser Giffords does an excellent job in researching an often ignored corner of art history, Mexican folk art. She provides insight into how these images were made, but also helps the reader understand the devotional context in which these images were used by people in the nineteenth century (and are still used by people today). A must for a student in this area, especially as there is not yet abundant information in this field. The images are compelling and beautifully reproduced and the book is easy and interesting to read. I thoroughly enjoyed it!

This is the ultimate authentic Mexican food cookbook. Not only are the recipes easy to follow they also have wonderful, enticing pictures and a rich history of which part of Mexico the recipe comes from and how many dishes originated. It has recipes from sauces and snacks to drinks, deserts, and holiday specialties. This cookbook has wonderful hard to find recipes and includes many basic recipes in addition to the many specialty dishes. If you can only afford one Mexican cookbook or only have space for one - this is the cookbook to choose. I use it all year round and it is my favorite cookbook.

Forget the Beautiful Cookbooks... this (much too-)short series from Thunder Bay publishers -- one Mexican, one Italian, and one Chinese book -- is the best of the genre. It is at least as attractive as the Beautiful Cookbook series, and comprises a far more serious study of ethnic cooking. It concedes not one inch to Western kitchens at the expense of its authenticity (and for that reason may not alway be practical, but I don't care), and includes many abundant and enlightening discussions of the customary use of ingredients and traditional recipes. I like cookbooks -- I own a lot, and I read them a lot. These three are my most prized. I suppose this is partially because they are now out of print, which is a great shame; the series ended after only three entries. It would have been great to see what they could do with some other venerable cuisines like, say, French and Indian. The ones that do exist, however, are real food-lovers books.

This lavishly illustrated book is more than just a great collection of authentic mexican recipes, it's a wonderful introduction to the flavors, aromas, colors, and textures of ingredients that are going to be largely unfamiliar to anyone outside mexico. Likewise, special techniques used by the mexican cook are explained, so that the book teaches something of the culture (as well as being a great collection of recipes). Learn about the flavors and textures of authentic mexican-style cheeses, the range of flavors and uses for different types of chilis, and the intricacies of the humble torilla. Torres really knows her stuff!

This is one of the very best cookbooks I have ever discovered! It is as much an enclycopedia as a cookbook - offering much information on unfamiliar ingredients, utensils and techniques. I have learned more about Mexican cooking with this book than with any other. The recipes are authentic - some seem exactly as I have tasted in Mexico. The photos and layout are very attractive and easy to read. Would recommend this cook book to anyone who really wants to learn about Mexican cooking.

This book is good, maybe even great, but still can't compare to Melba Levick and Masako Takahashi's AWESOME "Mexicolor". Masako's other book, "Mexican Tiles" comes close, and still edges out "Mexicasa" a little bit as well, so when all is said and done I think I just have to chalk it up to Masako's EVIDENT love and appreciation for the unfathomable beauty of things Mexican. Melba Levick seems to me to see things more from the outside looking in, and without so much PASSION, kind of like a more disinterested spectator than a participant, but that could just be my opinion.

That said, this book is is REALLY NICE. I DO really like it and I highly recommend it- especially if you already own and really liked "Mexicolor" and "Mexican Tiles". Or if you aren't so much into artesanias and Mexican interior design, but are more of an armchair traveler or are interested in actual historic hotels and haciendas.

What Gina Hyams and Melba Levick have created here is a wonderful compilation of photos of 21 of Mexico's most spectacular and beautiful inns and bed & breakfast places.
Melba Levick must have had a ball taking these shots. There's hardly a picture that isn't beautiful in its own right - and there must be at least 300 of them. For this observer, the Mexican talent for blending and matching and mixing colors is the highlight of page after page. We see gardens and patios and pool areas and bedroom and dining areas and a host of living spaces where the eye is simply enchanted by the way the owners of these homes have decorated their various spaces. My own personal favorite is, of all things, a bathroom wall composed of talavera tiles where almost no two tiles on the wall match each other.
All the houses are fully described by Gina Hyams and in most cases she gives us anecdotes and stories about how the various places came about. Thus, for instance, in Hacienda Katanchel in the Yucatan,we read that the present owners discovered the place in 1996. It had been abandoned for 35 years and originally dated back to the 17th century. So what they acquired were 740 acres of dense jungle in which were buried many crumbling buildings with trees growing through walls and ceilings. They gradually cleared the mess away and started building and renovating in a blend of Mexican, Mayan and Spanish styles. And you should see the place now.
On a less ambitious scale, we read about Mesón Sacristia de la Compañia in Puebla. This began as a family-run antique store which the owners turned into a restaurant and then an inn. It has one extra little twist for people who stay there - everything in the place is for sale. The owners are continually having to replace dishes and furniture.
And so the stories go... Pick up a copy and give your coffee table a treat.

I can't say enough about the quality of the pictures in this book. Startling and brilliant color. Nice writeups about the inns and haciendas. For anyone traveling to Mexico and looking for unique and historical places to stay, this would be a great book to read before the trip. Highly recommend.

You can almost feel the colours and shapes, taste the food and smell the flowers in this lavishly illustrated book on Mexican Haciendas and Hotels. I can see why allot of the people that started these Inns sold everything they had and moved to Mexico to start a new life. This book will be an inspiration to architects and would also make a great coffee table book. Be careful to check the binding when you get it. The glue on mine all fell off in chunks after the first read!

Probobly one of the best books I've ever read in my life!!!!!!!Even though it sounds childish a very great prediction of the downfall of the Mayan civilization!!!

This book is everything I hoped it would be. It is exciting, suspencful, and has a good ending, though rather predictable, and very short. Several new characters were introduced in the final installment of the Vampire Plagues, and the old ones stayed as good as they were before. This book is absolutely delightful, though a little on the babyish side, because it is not terribly sophisticated and like I said before, very predictable.

story line was ok, but all in all it was pretty good

The third of the VAMPIRE PLAGUES triology... It is so adventurous and, I have to admit, suspenseful, with the background located back at the Mayan home, in Mexico. I love how the author relates the experiences to the ancient Mayan ways. I think this is so interesting, also the fact that (although I may sound childish) this theory of his is indeed a possibility of the fall of the Mayan civilization. Well, for all that agree with me, you'll find this book quite intriguing!!!

I bought this book for my husband. He likes it very much that he is trying several recipes. This book is pretty much well done. Congratulatios to everyone who colaborated in this awesome mexican culinary book. Thanks to the chef and author of this book Scott Linquist who traveled to my country to learn and taste the real mexican food.

A very user friendly cookbook ideally suited for cooking good things at home. A perfect gift for your friends who love to cook. Scott's restaurant is a "must do" when you travel to New York City.

I had the pleasure of attending a Scott Linquist cooking demo and one of the things made was guacamole. Now guacamole is how I judge a Mexican restaurant. The quality of the guacamole, usually reflects the quality of the rest of the menu. Needless to say I have tasted a lot of guacamole and was prepared to be unimpressed but I have to tell you it was the best guacamole I have ever tasted. On the strength of this alone I bought a copy of his cookbook Mod Mex half expecting the recipes to be intricate and complicated. I was pleasantly surprised to find not only clear easy to follow recipes but also loads of step by step pictures showing the techniques key to making each dish such as how to wrap a tamale properly.

If you love Mexican food this is a great addition to your collection both for it's fresh modern take on classic recipes but also it's detailed pictures of the proper way to prepare them.

Mod Mex: Cooking Vibrant Fiesta Flavors at Home

This is a great cookbook for Mexican food lovers. It is simple to follow and has great illustrations. Of course, I am a little predjudiced! Be careful with the chiles, though. I'm a little wimpy so I had to cut down the amount on some recipes!

Although it might seem dated, the information in this book is extraordinarily complete, with detailed descriptions of anatomy, behavior, and chapters devoted to specific species. You might consider a book like "Owls: The Silent Fliers" just for it's excellent photographs, but if you want detailed information, P. Johnsgard's book is unmatched. Note also, although it's fine photographs may be moderate in number, the technical illustrations far exceed all other books I've seen on owls.

This book is a fantastic reference book pertaining to the appearance, mating behaviors, habitat and range, nesting patterns, and favorite foods of North American Owls. The color pictures are so much better than any black and white drawing could hope to achieve. The individual discriptions are well organized under sub-topics for quick reference.

I have many books on owls, and this is one of the most comprehesive books that I have seen on the natural history of owls. There are good drawings and photographs in the first 15 pages of the book. The classification and evolution section was of great interest to me and very useful. The natural histories of each species is very in-depth and thorough. There is also a glossary, which is very helpful in defining words which you may not know. Overall, the book is excellent, and I would highly recommend it to the beginner, novice, or expert birder.

The book is about many different owls and how they live.Some owls live in the forest some in the snow some in the the hot dessert.they eat rodents,lizards,

this book made me cry. The pictures he captures, especially of the textiles are poetic and seriously moving. I am definately buying a copy of this book for my mom.

Jonathon B. Wittenberg's book does a wonderful job of capturing life as it is in Navajo culture through a Navajo-centered lens as opposed to a Western-lens. I think Tony Hillerman's quote on the back of the book does a wonderful job of capturing my feeling for the Navajo people after reading this book: " What I saw there [the Big Rez] sparked my love affair with The Navajos, their enduring culture of love, good humor and harmony, and the high, dry, dramatic landscape in which they endure. This is a beautiful and valuable book." I certainly fell in love with the Navajos after reading this remarkable book, and I encourage others to read this book to gain further understanding and appreciation for the incredible Navajos.

This is a beautiful, heart warming collection of images, outstanding for the quality of the photographs and above all for the choice of subjects, made with great sensitivity and an obvious love and admiration for the culture it portrays. Viewing Jonathan Wittenberg's photographs will be a memorable experience, especially for Tony Hillerman fans.

Navajo Nation 1950: Traditional Life In Photographs is a compilation of 100 black-and-white duotone-printed photographs taken by Jonathan B. Wittenberg to record and illustrate life on the Navajo reservation in 1950. Truly capturing with an artist's eye the dignity and beauty of an ancient Native American culture surviving in the midst of the broader mid-20th century American nation, Navajo Nation 1950 is a showcase of photographic excellence taken with a bulky, twin-lens reflex camera enabling the preservation through a photographic record of the Navajo people and culture that includes images from the Monument Valley, Black Mesa, Navajo Mountain, Lukachukai (a high bench between the Chuska mountains to the east and the desert plain to the west), Teas Toh (close to the old Highway 66), the Window Rock Navajo Tribal Fair, and the Canyon de Chelley. Enhanced for scholars as well as non-specialist general readers with an interest in Navajo culture with an index to the photographs, and appendix (Progress of a Shootings Chant), and a Navajo reservation map, Navajo Nation 1950 is a welcome addition to personal and academic Photography and Native American Studies collections.

Although this book is certainly lovely enough to be a ''coffee-table book'', it is much more. The photographer found interesting historical photographs of New Mexico urban and rural scenes and then went to the exact same sites and photographed what the scenes look like today. Some of theses sites are extremely remote, and also must have been very difficult to find. The comparison of photographs of New Mexico scenes from the modern times with historical photographs is fascinating,and the quality of the new photographs is outstanding. What surprised me about the book was how intriguing the narrative was. The author did an excellent job of describing both the backgrounds of the historical photographs and also the nature or reasons for the changes in the new images. In addition, he included very readable anecdotes about what efforts he went through to gain access to the sites and how he approached each ''shoot.'' This is a book that would be enjoyed by people who enjoy beautiful photographs and who love to read about New Mexico and the history of the American West.

This book was extremely interesting and informative. I have lived in Albuquerque my whole life and found it to be accurate. I ordered it for my boyfriend, Thomas, but we both have enjoyed. I will be getting the Albuquerque, Then and Now next.

Sheryl nanco

Mr. Stone spent two years traveling around New Mexico searching out and rephotographing scenes first done by others over a period of about 1855-1945. The book is divided into sections (of the state) and each photograph, past and present, has details about it included.
Mr. Stone writes about how some of the locations have changed a great deal, some not so much, many he could get to (or at least close enough) to duplicate exactly but others he had to do what he could to approximate the original shot. He doesn't say much about what he used for equipment other than some very tall ladders or tripods, no film details, not much camera information either.
I found that some things have changed a great deal while it appears some would look almost the same today to the original photographer as the original shot did.
I wish the author had included a town by town index as well as the regional listing, if you know the name of a town but are unsure of it's location you wll have to search each section for it- assuming it is there.
This is a very fascinating book, I'd like to go see many of these locations myself.

If you like history and art, you'll love WILLIAM STONE'S NEW MEXICO THEN AND NOW. Using the principal of repeat photography--finding an old picture of a location and rephotographing the same spot--he created a photographic, geographic, and to a degree social history of the state called The Land of Enchantment. You'll have a good time looking through this beautiful coffee table volume. Like every region of the world, New Mexico has had its share of quirky places, where outrageous people did off the wall stuff. And--places where events were dead serious, and which still influence our lives, though they happened long ago. With his large-format camera and tall tripod, STONE has captured the best of The Land of Enchantment's spots for the now images. Even better, his then shots were taken by some of America's finest early photographers. William Henry Jackson, Edward Weston, and many others bring the pages of the book to life. STONE's captions add to the pictures, documenting his feelings and thoughts as he worked on each location. His writing partner, JEROLD WIDDSON's articulare essays tie the pictures together in a lively fashion. No dull paragraphs full of facts here. In fact, if you have sonmeone at home think's history class is boring, leave NEW MEXICO THEN AND NOW around to be discovered. If you have someone who finds history exciting, NEW MEXICO THEN AND NOW is the perfect coffee table book because it's designed to be opened and examined slowly--savored, in other words, like a nice, hot cuppa your favorite brew. In case you haven't figured it out, I enjoyed NEW MEXICO THEN AND NOW. I did it on many levels. Though it focuses on one region of the country, it carries a universal message about change and stability that's fun to discover and think about. It gives us a sense of the American contribution to photography as an art form--and that contribution was no small one. It offers a glimpse of what the west was like to settle and live in--and what it's like today, as a result. NEW MEXICO THEN AND NOW will make a great addition to anyone's living room.

This is a well written and very informative book about the survival of a tenacious people and about a part of the hidden history of the state of New Mexico. I would recommend it to any one interested in Jewish history, Sephardic Judaism, Crypto-Jews, Spanish culture and New Mexico history.

The written word with photos gives us some historic background of jews who came from Spain, because of being persecuted. While they gave up their jewish religion, we find out that many rituals were kept and practiced. Fasinating book.

The culmination of years of heartfelt, dedicated work by a fine artist, the photographs reveal the depth and complexity of this story with beauty and true humanity.

I'll admit I am biased but this book finally puts a real human face on this southwest phenomena. Haunting images of a living glimmer of an almost forgotten people. Cary Herz performs a mitzvah by remembering us and in a small way provides help along the road to redemption of this small remnant.

This book has the goods - it is very serious, not a typical sports book, but it teaches at every level. Civil Rights. Science. Women. Black Power. It is tough to think of what it leaves out. Starts slow, but really picks up and by the time it is done, it's like you've been watching PBS for two hours and didn't feel it. Learn.

This book really helped to open my eyes about the events surrounding the 1968 Olympics. More than that, it also talks about many other significant issues such as women's roles during that time, the way certain people saw various events before, during, and after the times. Be prepared to be patient when you read this. Dr. Bass takes her time and goes way back with her research leading up to the games in the late 60's. There were some areas I was not too interested in, such as some scientists' claims that black superiority in the athletic arena is due to biological and genetic advantages. Yet there were other times in the book like when Tommie Smith explained the MEANING, the TRUE MEANING, behind he and Carlos' actions that really made me take it in and appreciate the courage they had to take a stand at that time on that particular stage. From the black socks to the scarf Smith wore on his neck to both of them not wearing shoes on the victory stand while the national anthem played. More than just discussing the Olympics, she digs deep into the perception of the black athlete, from the 1930's when Jesse Owens was the man to the 60's, and to the 90's with Michael Jordan. Like I said earlier though, be prepared to be patient when you are reading this. There were some parts that I had to bear with to get to what I wanted to read, but all in all, it's a read that can definitely challenge your views not only about the black athlete, but sports and life in general.

A work that provides insight into how race is understood and projected in U.S. society -- and the world -- and where its ties to nation, class, gender, etc. come into play most dramatically. This exploration of the black power movement at the Mexico City olympics is a critical examination of a multitude of topics: television, sports, civil rights, humanity, globality -- the list is varied and important. Complex, complicated, interesting, imperative. A learning experience for all who turn its pages.

I learned so much from this book. I thought that it might be too hard to read, but it was worth it: I will never watch sports -- especially the Olympics -- the same way again. There's too much to list contained here: the Olympics, the media, race, sexuality, women -- it goes on and on. I think everyone should read it.