Arizona Books

It is not surprising that Barry Bonds appears on the cover of this look at the "National League West" for young fans, but it is ironic since Bonds had not yet played during the 2005 season (he might be ready in September, but who knows). Jim Thome was on the cover of the "National League East" volume and Mark Prior is the cover boy for the "National League Central," and both of them have spent time on the disabled list, but at least they got some games in this year. Then again, this has been a strange year for this particular division. When as of last night this is a division where the San Diego Padres are a game under .500--and in first place. Meanwhile, the N.L. East the New York Mets are playing .513 ball and in last place. What an interesting world in which we live.

Jim Gigliotti introduces the five teams in this division as being an unusual collection of franchises. The Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants have storied histories that go back to their days in Brooklyn and New York, while the Arizona Diamondbacks, Colorado Rockies, and San Diego Padres are relative new comers. The history of the division, which goes back to 1969, is traced to provide a quick overview of the N.L. West as a whole. Then Gigliotti goes on to provide more about each individual club. His stated goal is to allow his young readers to soon qualify as an expert on all of the teams in this division, but that is overstating the case. However, he does give young fans a solid introduction and the means to learn more.

The teams are arranged alphabetically in this slim volume and in each chapter we learn about the history of the franchise, its best moments on the field, and some of the biggest stars who have played for each team. This becomes a disservice to the Dodgers and Giants who have each been around twice as long as the other three teams put together. The Dodgers have six world championships and the Giants have won five World Series. There are photographs of Jackie Robinson and Sandy Koufax to go along with Duke Snider's Hall of Fame plaque, but that leaves other Dodger greats like Roy Campanella, Maury Wills, and Orel Hershiser just to get their names mentioned. Carl Hubbell has his plaque and John McGraw, Mel Ott, and Willie McCovey get their photographs in, to go along with a statue of Willie Mays, but Christy Mathewson gets passed over.

Still, when Gigliotti talks about New York Yankees second baseman Bobby Richardson snaring McCovey's line drive to end the 1962 World Series he is doing his job (remember the "Peanuts" cartoons where Charlie Brown sits dejectedly on the curb and in the last panel jumps up and asks why McCovey could not have hit the ball 2 feet--or even 1 foot--higher?). Sometimes the details are put in the margins of the book, but the important thing is that they are there.

The book tries to tie the old to the new, so while Randy Johnson and Larry Walker have moved on to other teams, young fans have pictures of current stars like Preston Wilson and Jason Schmidt. However, this is a hit and miss proposition since Sean Burroughs of the Padres gets a color photo but is currently in the minor leagues (the son of former A.L. M.V.P. slugger Jeff Burroughs and a Little League World Series star, Sean has not shown the power numbers somebody playing the hot corner has to have).

A lot of the fun of being a baseball fan is pouring over statistics, and in the back of the book young fans will find several pages of Stat Stuff, so that they can see that Todd Helton's lifetime average of .399 with the Rockies is currently a point higher than that of Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn with the Padres. While Christy Mathewson still has the career team records for wins (372) and strikeouts (2,499) with the Giants, Barry Bonds leads in none of those categories, although his considerable accomplishments are noted in detail at the end of the chapter on the San Francisco team. Young fans will also find a Glossary of baseball terms so they know what it means to be in the "cellar" or an "underdog."

There is also a Time Line that puts Bobby Thomson's "Shot Heard 'Round the World" in 1951 in historical perspective and a list of books in the back of this Behind the Plate volume where readers can go For More Information about the National Leagues West and Major League Baseball. If you check out the homepage on the web you will get links to the MLB and ESPN cites, which will help young fans find out more about the players and the teams mention. Gigliotti provides a lot of information, but there is so much out there, especially if you are a fan of the Dodgers or the Giants (no one is a fan of both, as this book should also make clear to its young readers).

this book gives great information for anyone interested in learning more about the history of native american tribes and the double standard our legal and legislative systems have caused.

While home is 'where the heart is', it is also where the body happens to reside as well. "The Nature Of Home: Taking Root In A Place" by environmental literature critic, board member of the Environmental Association for Great Lakes Education, and academician Greta Gaard (University of Wisconsin - River Falls) provides a focused yet wide ranging discussion on what it truly means to be at home in the world. A collection of essays that draw upon such diverse sources as Buddhist studies, feminist psychology, ecopsychology, and environmental writing, "The Nature Of Home surveys the interplay between 'place and identity. The resulting conclusion of her theme is that 'home' is not a static concept but rather a process of 'cultivating the connections with place and people that shape who we become'. Thoughtful and thought-provoking, "The Nature Of Home" will prove to be of immense relevance to students of the psychological aspects of the environmentally oriented concept of home, the concept of ecofeminism, and issues of environmentally relevant social justice, as well as non-specialist general readers with an interest in being and feeling at home in our world from the deserts of Southern California, to the high country of the Sierras, the Wind River Mountains, the North Cascades, Washington wildlands and Minnesota waterways in every season of the year.

Gladys Reichard lived with Navajos for many years and was interested in weaving, then sandpaintings, then how Navajo religion worked, and where sandpaintings fit into the picture. She tries to clasify and group elements of the sandpaintings and show how they referred to Navajo precepts. She did a lot of work in this area, but could not contain it all.

Hey- what can I say, my Pilgrim Partner, Roger Conrad, and I, at the behest of Dr. Jett at UCD's Geography Dept, got to drive what ended up feeling like every side-of-a-side dirt-road turn-off track on the western half (west of Washington Pass, that is) of the Navajo Reservation back in the summer of '70, so my photos (and those of the others!) are pretty outstanding, and the data that Dr. Jett and Ms. Spencer put together for this book is really quite well collected & set forth.
This volume amply addresses both "traditional" (be there such?) Navajo accomodations, and their various & often-unique adaptations in the latter part of the 20th Century.
What is not in this volume are the adventures & times that Rog & I lived..., such as that fellow who'd a special cactus collection in the only 3 story house in that country, or the tiny old lady who invited us into her cinder-block home on the southern flank of Navajo Mt. to show off the largest rug we'd ever seen, there on her loom, or the trial & error delight of learning how to fairly-successfully navagate through that most foreign country, bouncing along in a '64 Ford 1/2 ton with a primitive canvas cabin we made on the back end, hunting up every trading post we could find & gathering info & leads without asking any questions, all in The Way.
But enough nostalgia- Buy the book!!
Besties from out in Western Colorado- Roy K. Farber

Mrs. Bourne shows, in writing about a small one room schol house in rural southern Arizona, that the issues in education have not changed greatly. Lack of funding, quarrels over bi-lingual education, educating the whole child and not just a course of study have been with us. Her solutions give hope to those of us still teaching. Very motivating. A must-read for any pre-service teacher.

I happen to be part of one of the families discussed in this book. I found it to be quite nice. I wasn't mentioned in the book but my mother, grandma, granpa etc. was. I think Geta did a fabulous job in making this book a success! It took a lot of time to archive this information about my family, and through this book, I am able to know where my ancestors came from and pass the book on to my children in the years to come. thank You.

Sincerely, Sommer Hayes

Notebooks of Elizabeth Cook-Lynn is a diverse collection of poetry, prose, and political views. that questions the all-too-common bias and distortion that permeates retellings of American history. "...the Image of The White American Male as Fearless Explorer and Conqueror, intrepid, strong and brave Seeker of New Vistas going out fearlessly into the Unknown, is well established in story and legend. Why else was Star Trek the most popular television show in the history of the small screen?" A biting critique of national self-aggrandizement, written with intelligent passion and a keen sense for pointing out misdirections and half-truths. Cook-Lynn is especially fearsome in her denouncement of human atrocities, subversions of the democratic process, and cover-ups. "Democracy in 2002 and the Free Press": A disputed election / a pretender president // press coverage / like a flood shrouds circumstances / of political theft, journals stride past in fear / and darkness, faded shawls about their shoulders // but, the FCC changes its regulations / so news organizations / can become conglomerates / ravenous, sanctimonious abusers / of the rights of mankind.

Edited by Jon Reyhner, Octaviana V. Trujillo, Roberto Luis Carrasco, and Louise Lockard, this book is essential for Native people and others doing work within Indian Country on behalf of our languages and peoples.

The book's website, http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/NNL/, writes: "This book focuses on immersion language teaching methods, the use of technology in language revitalization, and other topics related to current efforts among Indigenous peoples to reclaim their linguistic and cultural heritages so they can live better lives in our modern world."

The book's contributers are: Sara L. Begay, Ruth Bennett, Heather A. Blair, Elizabeth Brandt, Roberto Luis Carrasco, Courtney B. Cazden, Ella Christie, Marilyn Cochran, Qwo-Li Driskill, Dora Dunn, Lula Elk, Ed Fields, JoAnn Fields, Leanne Hinton, Tracy Hirata-Edds, Wayne Holm, Anna Huckaby, Mary Jimmie, Angayuqaq Oscar Kawagley, Walter P. Kelley, Jeanette King, Barbara Laderoute, Louise Lockard, Tony L. McGregor, Gary Owens, Donna Paskemin, Lizette Peter, Margaret Raymond, Jon Reyhner, Florencia Riegelhaupt, Robert N. St. Clair, Irene Silentman, Deputy Chief Hastings Shade, Gloria Sly, Laura Wallace, George Wickliffe, Akira Yamamoto, and Evangeline Parsons Yazzie.

Rooted in the Annual Stabilizing Indigenous Languages Conference, this collection offers information for people at all levels of experience within First Nations / Native language revitalization movements and is a tool to be used by activists, linguists, and scholars.

This book in a larger sense is about "progress," about how new peoples equipped with newer laws, can overpower and replace older settlers and their traditions. In a land tenure policy dating back to the time Spanish settlers first inhabited what became New Mexico, governors were permitted to make grants to landless people, whether individuals or groups (usually related by blood in some way). These grants usually consisted of small agricultural areas, with the vast non-tillable regions (mountains, waterless desert stretches) carrying no title and open to all. It was with the influx of new settlers, mainly from the States, after 1846 that brought the concept of private ownership, especially of vast tracts of land. The Maxwell Land Grant, cobbled together from the earlier Beaubien-Miranda grant, was a huge, unsurveyed (thought at first to be anywhere between 97,000 and 1 million acres in size) parcel of land in northern New Mexico; how big it was, who actually owned it, and what rights previous settlers had on it were questions that roiled the are in conflict for decades until the Supreme Court settled the issue in 1887: the early Spanish settlers had no legitimate claims to their land any longer.

O.P. McMains was a Methodist minister who had come to New Mexico in 1875 to avenge the murder of fellow minister, and land grant opposer, F.J. Tolby. Partially successful in this, he stayed on and became a leading spokesman for settlers fighting the illegally expanded Maxwell Land Grant. Fifteen times he brought the case of the settlers to Washington, to little avail. The cause became a personal crusade for McMains against not just land grant policy, but also against many injustices levelled against the "common people." He could be fanatical: once he had himself purposely arrested for manslaughter charges to gain a podium for his cause.

Taylor's portrait of McMains is excellent; the man was truly admirable in many regards. Not only was he an indefatigable crusader, he also wrote poetry on the side. The book is a fascinating look at a particular period of time in the formation of the West and a man who fought the encroachments of the "new" as they ran roughshod over the traditions of the "old."