Arizona Books

If you are planning to travel in Brazil, or if you simply seek a better understanding of its history and its people, you must read this book. Before this, I never realized the impact of drought in Brazil, nor did I appreciate the beauty and the suffering of Brazilians. A creative, inspired, tragic and often funny story - this book will stay with me.

I have traveled in the Northeast of Brasil and found it to be an area that does not lend itself easily to summation or description. The hardship and happiness - the spirit of the people - are best reflected in the oral poetry passed between and through generations. And the politics of the area are painful to observe. But Mr. Arons does a great job of capturing the essential spirit of the people of whom he writes. Capturing their own lyrical history and distilling it into a plaintive, kind book of understanding does a tremendous service to a culture and history that time could otherwise forget.

Anyone interested in the politics of water, an issue of increasing importance in the developing world now and for years to come should read this book. Anyone interested in Brasil (more than just carnaval and other hedonistic fun) should read this book. Anyone interested in oral history MUST read this book.

I found this book to be very moving.It makes you feel as though you are right there with Gary and his fellow firefighters as they try to save their neighborhoods.I found the book to be very hard to put down and found myself thinking about the book during the day.At times, I was brought to tears as I read about the homes that were destroyed and the pets that were displaced by this awful fire. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys real life adventures.

I am new to living in the Arizona mountains where Gary's story takes place. I have driven through the area of forest where blackened trees still stand and sensed the gothic eeriness of this sad event, and now I know the details of that terrible fire. Gary's story is a page turner and the witness of one volunteer fire fighter's experience. As a former librarian I would highly recommend this book for youth and adults. And you don't have to live in Arizona to appreciate this tale of a volunteer who found himself helping to battle the largest wildfire in the history of the State of Arizona.

I believe William Walker's account of his adventures in Nicaragua demonstrate lucid thinking, an ability to enthrall a reader and a defininite articulacy.

William Walker leaves us with some insight to the level of arrogance he attained during his lifetime. The man betrayed the people who solicited him for support. Only General Munoz suspected Walker's motives, which may have been why the General was murdered. Walker gets 5 stars for the arrogant coward he was and for documenting it.

i am lucky enough to have an authgraphed copy, and i tell you, i could'nt put it down. the things 'tony' did were incredible. anyone entering politics should have this on their mandatory reading agenda. loved it.

I am reading this book and i actually had Joe Stedino sign my book before i even read it. I really think that if you like nonfiction and like crime, then you will like this book

Clare V. McKanna Jr. has been teaching Native American history at San Diego State University since 1987. In White Justice In Arizona: Apache Murder Trials In The Nineteenth Century, McKanne Jr. focuses upon how the judicial system of nineteenth-century Arizona denied Apaches justice. Apaches learned the hard way that their customs and methods for maintaining social control were drastically at odds with a new, alien, and mystifying legal system. Many did not know English, and the public defenders appointed to them were largely inexperienced or neglectful, as there was no money to be made representing indigent clients. White settlers and juries had been conditions to believe, through popular culture, word of mouth, and sensationalized newspaper headlines, that Apaches were the most dangerous and bloodthirsty of Native Americans; and so any Apache accused of killing a white person was likely to be treated as a blood enemy to be destroyed in the all-white courts, rather than innocent until proven guilty. A stark, sharply critical, and edifying look at the iniquities of false justice.

Murder cases against Apache Indians in the territory of Arizona in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century are recounted much as cases against blacks in the South have been done in other books and media. McKanna goes beyond the by-now familiar charge that the Apaches, as a minority ethnic group in lands taken over by white settlers, got no justice to speak of. His main concern is how the system worked against the defendants, even when circumstances and in some cases physical evidence raised questions about the murder charges. The author also views the acts of the Native Americans against the backdrop of ill-defined laws and jurisdiction in the recently-formed territory and age-old Apache culture, which was undergoing a combination of forced and voluntary transition. McKanna's accounts are like popular case-book studies of the cases against the Indians with a sociological factor brought in. He teaches American Indian history at San Diego State U. and has written previous books on the inter-related subjects of crime and race.

Richard Maurer's new book chronicles Powell's second expedition through the eyes, words, and illustrations of Fred Dellenbaugh - a 17-year-old boy from Buffalo, NY who, along with some rowing experience on the turbulent Niagara River and a facility for drawing, had the gumption to make his dream come true. This story is very well written and quite compelling and will appeal to those who love adventure stories set in the Old West. The photographs and illustrations are remarkable. My hats off to the author!

I read Dellenbaugh's reprinted "Canyon Voyage" (the much abbreviated title) as a young man in the flatlands of western Kansas in the 1960's. The romance of the period of Dellenbaugh's youth, and the Powell Expeditions in particular (1869-72), stimulated in me an ongoing interest in the history of the region. I have read the edited and published diaries of most of the participants of the two expeditions, and continue to invest in an array of scholarly and coffee table books that even remotely address the subject. My annual crossings of the Colorado and Dirty Devil rivers to pursue research interests in southeastern Utah never fail to regenerate my own wish to have participated in such an epic adventure. Thus, when I saw the notice of publication of Maurer's book about Dellenbaugh on the second Powell expedition, with the expression in the title "the true adventures," I was expecting something on the order of D.D. Fowler's book about Jack Hiller's, another expedition participant. That is, a pretty serious biography of the man and a pretty faithful reproduction of the daily diary kept during his time in the field. Well, it might be the former, but it is certainly not the latter. Unlike the other expeditioners who kept diaries, Dellenbaugh's original diary has never been published. Perhaps this is because his 1908 "Canyon Voyage" was a timeline-based (albeit compressed) narrative and researchers may have believed there was nothing more of value in the original diary. While Maurer read the diaries of all the participants, including Dellenbaugh's, as well as Dellenbaugh's "Canyon Voyage" and the earlier "Romance of the Colorado River," Maurer's timeline is even more compressed than Dellenbaugh's. Consequently the book lacks the rich detail of Dellenbaugh's diary and earlier publications. For example, unlike the present book, the consecutive daily diary entries of "Looked for the Major today but of course he did not come; carried the rations over," "Looked for the Major again," and "Still waiting,"conveys a real sense of frustration at being in the same camp, on the bank of the Colorado, day after day, laying up under a boat to avoid the oppressive August heat, with nothing to do, waiting for the Major and Prof to come in so the party can continue the trip down the river through the Grand Canyon. Maurer acknowledged that in the writing of the book he "sometimes resorted to the methods of historical fiction to flesh out some of the stories" and that "footnotes would be out of place in a book like this." Thus despite having the best possible materials at hand from which to draw, this book was never intended as a scholarly work. In that context, the writing was a success. Maurer did locate some great historical photographs and drawings not published elsewhere, and that alone is an important contribution. More than that, though, the book was a really entertaining read. I can well imagine some person, like me once, never having heard of either Powell or Dellenbaugh, picking up the book and just marveling at what they did. And, interest aroused, they have an avocation.

I am a big fan of Ann Zwinger and of the Four Corners region. This book recreates the experience of walking through the canyons of southeastern Utah showing that despite surface similarities--each is unique and special. The book is enriched with her drawings of flowers and animals.

This is a book that took me almost a year to read because I made myself ration my intake like it was a private hoard of maple syrup or 100 year old brandy. I have visited Southeast Utah for years and this book captures the essence of the unique canyon country wilderness. It is an experience in the small and personal; the opposite of driving up to a view point, jumping out of your SUV, taking a picture and leaving.

For anyone who loves this country, this book is a return trip. For anyone who wonders how anyone could be interested preserving this "hot, dry, and dusty place," this may be the book that tells you.

In the early 1990s the Nature Conservancy purchased the Gray Ranch in the bootheel of New Mexico, the most ecologicially diverse area of the United States. I've always resented that the Conservancy resold the ranch to a private foundation and thus denied public access to a huge (321,000 acres) and spectacular wilderness. This book explains the factors leading to the sale and resale of the Gray Ranch. I now understand the Conservancy's motives -- but I still think the Gray Ranch should have been made accessible, at least on a limited basis, to a public hungry for wide-open spaces.

The owners of the Gray Ranch and a dozen other big ranchers make up the Malpai Borderlands Group in the high, wide, and lonesome country of southwestern New Mexico and adjacent Arizona. The ranchers have put their land in conservation easements to protect it from one of the worst environmental threats to the West: sub-division of big ranches into five acre ranchettes. The Malpai ranchers are also in the forefront of developing new and improved practices of managing rangeland. All in all, they're a damned good bunch of people. I would hope that their dedication to preserving open space would spread, especially to the ranches just across the border in Mexico.

Not mentioned in this book is another huge threat to the environment along the border: the proposed Wall to keep out illegal aliens which will also inhibit the movement of jaguars, ocelots, antelope, deer, and a host of other creatures who need to pass back and forth over the border in search of water and food.

"Working Wilderness" features wonderful photographs -- alas, not all of them labeled -- and an informative text about the Malpai Borderlands and the people who live and work there. There are sections about preserving, endangered species, the use of fire as a management tool, profiles of ranchers and conservationists, and a message that cooperation is possible between cowboys and environmentalists to preserve the greatest asset of the Western United States: open space and room to breathe.

Smallchief

WORKING WILDERNESS: THE MALPAI BORDERLANDS GROUP AND THE FUTURE OF THE WESTERN RANGE may sound so specialized that one would think it limited only to college-level regional holdings - but it's not. The Western range covers the extent of America's western landscape and its history reveals it's one of the most fiercely contested areas in the country when it comes to land management issues. Private lands have lately been changing to residential development, further involving political and social issues conflicts, which are chronicled in WORKING WILDERNESS. Here geography professor Nathan Sayre examines the alliances that have worked to preserve the open range, The Malpai Borderlands Group, and provides an unusual expose of their efforts.

This is a fabulous book for any F>L>W> collecter. It has many black and white photos which add a nostalgic feel to the book. This is the first book of many I own about Wright to show the beautiful Gertrude and Rose Pauson House. It burned to the ground. I only wish he'd put more in the book, since he did a story for a magazine about the home. This is a Must Have!!!

This is a fabulous book for any F>L>W> collecter. It has many black and white photos which add a nostalgic feel to the book. This is the first book of many I own about Wright to show the beautiful Gertrude and Rose Pauson House. It burned to the ground. I only wish he'd put more in the book, since he did a story for a magazine about the home. This is a Must Have!!!

Misconceptions about the Yaqui (Yoeme) people are widespread because the New Age movement has turned them into gurus. Carlos Castañeda has surely put this tribe on the map, but not in a way the Yaquis might have liked to see it. The one book which has been written from a Yaqui point of view (`Yaqui Deer Songs' by Felipe S. Molina) offers us a glimpse into a world which is, in many ways, very different from ours. You can read about the sacred deer and its meaning to the Yaquis, but I guess you have to be a Yaqui to grasp its full meaning. I would recommend this book to anyone who is truly interested in the world view of the Yaqui people.

The lyrics of the Yaqui Deer Songs are magical, moving poetry both in English translations and in the liquid sounds of the Yaqui originals. This book gives a sense of the true flavor of Yaqui culture and spirituality.