New Mexico Books

While the collection of images included is not exhaustive of all work done by Baumann, it provides a thorough sampling of his life work and details the process by which he created his masterpieces. Excellent book. FYI, my understanding is that a new compendium will be done in 2008 that should be a good complement to this book.

A nicely crafted book that covers all bases in this artists career. Great reproductions of the prints, well-written text and a solid book to hold in your hand. History on Baumann covers beginning of career to the end with just a touch of the technical side of this art form. Certainly inspired me!

This is a well-written and technically, beautifully illustrated book. The author has provided a thorough narrative of the techniques Gustave Baumann used to create his magnificent woodblock prints. For me, the best parts are the several chapters that explain and illustrate, step-by-step and layer-by-layer, how several of Baumann's prints were painstakingly created, with the results of each pressing shown progressively toward the finished artwork. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the woodblock technique, Baumann, and Arts and Crafts printmaking.

This book and the companion book, Gustave Baumann: Nearer to Art, by Martin F. Krause et al (1993, Museum of New Mexico Press)detail the life and work of one of the great printmakers. Baumann's works are exquisite and this book details his working methods and graphically displays his multi block technique. I have read and re-read these books several times, if for no other reason than to know more about the life of a simple artist going about the straightforward work of making timeless and breathtaking works of art.

Living in the Southwestern Chihuahuan desert, I am always on the search for sources of information regarding local flora and particularly ethnobotanical uses of plants. This is an excellent guide originally published in 1947 and edited by Michael Moore who I consider to be an expert on herbal uses of native southwestern plants. For anyone interested in this subject, a fabulous resource to have in your library!

Laura Curtin lived and worked among the curanderas and Native Americans of Northern New Mexico during the early part of the twentieth century. She fell in love with the plants and their lore, and later, at the prompting of a friend, decided to record them. Healing Herbs was first published in 1947, at a time when interest in traditional healing in Northern New Mexico was in decline. It helped preserve traditional information for a new generation -- when editor Michael Moore arrived in Santa Fe in the 1960s he found copies of Curtin's book as a prized possession in many traditional households. The book is unique in the literature of ethnobotany in that it was written essentially by an insider in the tradition, rather than by an observer doing interviews.

Reviewer: A reader from Southern Colorado - Northern New Mexico. An excellent aid for those of us researching our family roots in New Mexico. This book does much to explain and date the migration of our Hispanic/Indian ancestors in and from the Rio Grande Valley during the past 400 years.

In this book Nostrand describes the cultural geography and history of the "Hispano homeland" -- a region in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado with a distinct and interesting history and culture. He also traces the connections between this region and outside influences, from the early Spanish settlers, to the Pueblo Indians and Anglos, to relations with other Mexican Americans in the U.S. today. This book is useful in understanding borderland influences further away from the more often represented U.S./Mexico border. Covering over 400 years of history, it shows how border influences change and last through time. It's well written, extremely thorough with good maps tracing "intrusions" of other cultures into the region, and good tabular information, too. I found this book invaluable for my own work in northern New Mexico, but this book may also be useful for those interested in rural development, community studies, and sense of place, as Nostrand articulates well what the Hispano Homeland means to the people who live there and why it becomes necessary for some to leave. It is a good complement to Carlos Velez-Ibanez' Border Visions, which is less geographically based and focuses more on cultural place closer to the U.S. - Mexico border.

I loved this book! Having just finished my own American pilgrimage, and non-fiction book: HOLY PERSONAL, looking for small private places of worship, Indiana University Press, Fall 2000, I found HOME ALTARS OF MEXICO one of the best books on the subject currently available. It touched me deeply. The color photographs are wonderful, somewhat formal considering the informality of the subject matter, and the contrast is intriguing-- no SOHO artist could improve on these spiritual assemblages. The text is a series of very well-written and inspired essays. Salvo looks at the altars of one small town in Mexico, so the book is highly focused. A truly aesthetic collection that brings light to a subject that is too often triviaalized and trendy.

I love this book and need to look at it periodically to remind myself of timeless values. The villagers who opened their homes and hearts to the Salvo family and the readers of this book bring their love of God, Christ, the Virgin Mother and all the saints to life through the photos, statues, and items both religious and secular that they collect in their sacred spaces. One picture features two Coca-Cola bottles as candle-holders. One altar-shelf has a chair below it featuring the handiwork of the lady of the house: the neatly folded sheets and laundry bring the fruits of her labors to God in a very concrete fashion. Thank you, Dana Salvo, for sharing these photos, and thank you, authors, for your thoughts on them. Above all, thanks to all the people in the pictures for sharing their lives and spirit with this book's readers.

Dan Flores has lived most of his life in the Horizontal Yellow. Another, more historical term for this land would be the Spanish-Mexican Frontier. Florida was not settled from Mexico, of course, and the settlement of California was decades to more than a century later.

Flores explores this land from both the history and natural history points of view, with the historical part generally beginning with the first Spanish-U.S. contact as part of post-Louisiana Treaty boundary negotiations.

Not all Texas is the Southern spillover of Dallas and Houston; get acquainted with the rest of it, and adjacent areas, in this book.

Dan Flores' long-awaited new book once again proves he has few peers when it comes to a deep understanding of his native Near Southwest, a vision for its long term health, and the ability to weave a tale which is scholarly, literary, and deeply personal.

Anyone who cares about our Earth will love this book. The pictures of Cherokee medicine plants at the end of the book are beautiful. This story helps us remember the delicate balance that exists on this planet between the plants, the animals and us.

Wow! The Cherokees had some great ideas about the origins of diseases and medicine! Because the human beings treated the animals so badly, the animals fought back by making the humans sick. I especially like the scary drawing of the copperheads weaving above the heads of the sleeping people. According to the story, this is why we have frightening dreams about snakes to this day. The animals make so many illnesses that the people are struck down. But all is not lost. The plants come to our rescue and create medicines to treat all the sicknesses made by the animals. When the story ends, the reader finds a bonus on the last four pages - beautiful drawings of medicinal plants, complete with their Cherokee and Latin pronunciations and a list of their uses in natural medicine. The illustrations in this book are superb. My personal favorite is a double-page spread of a young man in a canoe. Murv Jacob did his homework. Not only the animals, but every plant in the book is readily recognizable. This is a great read and a great visual experience for kids and adults alike.

No one should buy a home without reading this book first! It is a gem--packed with useful information in a very readable format. The author uses his knowledge of the real estate business and his own experiences as a professional to provide a valuable and thoughtful perspective on the whole process. I wish I'd read this book before my first foray into the world of home-buying, but even after several such ventures in my life, I still found I learned a lot by reading this book.

Buying a house would be a lot easier for all of us if we did it frequently. But most of us only buy a home a few times in our lives and, face it, the process is dauntingly complex. As with any complex field, real estate has developed its own technical vocabulary. Fortunately, this book is written in plain English, and makes few assumptions about its readers.

That being the case, it is an invaluable resource to potential home buyers, *especially* if the buyer is looking in the author's home state of Colorado.

The reader learns about the advantages of "buyer agents" and is walked step-by step, in plain English, through the maze involved in finding and purchasing just the right home. Numerous anecdotal "horror stories" illustrate the potential pitfalls in the buying process.

I know *I* will be able to make better decisions on my next house purchase after having read this book.

Saburo Sugiyama, who has participated in many of the key excavations in Teotihuacan, explore the Feathered Serpent Pyramid, in so far as this Pyramid (and human sacrifices associated) is an evidence of State Ideology and rising militarism of a superpower in Mesoamérica between 200-650 AD.
Excellent archaeological book!

Teotihuacan is an amazing mystery. At its peak, it was the 6th largest city in the entire world and exerted at least partial control over key Maya cities up to 600 miles away. Yet it did so with stone age technology, no written language, no beasts of burden, and not even the wheel. And because of the lack of written records, it's very difficult for us today to understand how any of this was possible in general terms, let alone know the details of its civilization and administration.

This book is an attempt to throw some light on these enigmas. It was written by one of the recognized experts on the site, who has participated in many of the key excavations there, and is based on what is known as of the present. The main discussion is a detailing of the massive (200-odd) victim human sacrifice that was part of the ground-breaking ceremony of the Feathered Serpent Pyramid, one of the 3 major buildings of Teotihuacan, and its implications for the government of the city.

This book is definitely not light reading. It's written in a clear yet rather technical manner, so those who aren't familiar with scientific writing might find it rather heavy going, although still informative. For those with a real interest in pre-Columbian Mesoamerican history, however, it's a very useful and fascinating book. However, there's no way around the disturbing nature of its subject matter, although the book doesn't dwell or even speculate on the gory details. It just tries to explain what the quantity and arrangement of bodies and artifacts means for our understanding of life and government in Teotihuacan.

I went to grade school with the gal who commited this horrendous crime and while I was deeply upset by her actions, I was glad to be able to read about what happened.

This is one of the better true-crime books I've read. What a horrific crime! What a disturbed person! One almost feels sorry for Darci, yet her gruesome crime is unforgivable. This book was well researched and very well written. I found myself neglecting everything around me until I finished this book; I simply couldn't put it down!