New Mexico Books

This book treats in great depth the history of San Antonio, Texas. It approaches the history from the standpoint of "community" formation. From an author who served as James Michener's researcher while writing his "TEXAS" one would expect the research is thorough and objective. One is not disappointed!

J. F. de la Teja is the greatest living historian of San Antonio. Here, he puts its history, its people, its institutions, its acequias and how they blend together in a single source. This book covers the early [Spanish] period of the city, and provides the opportunity to see the early settlement, to imagine the lives of those who began a new life here on the far northern reaches of New Spain, back in the early eighteenth century.

It is a "must have" book for anyone interested in San Antonio's early days: an outstanding resource for the student of Texas history.

As a high school English teacher who is designing a course on the literature of the Bay Area, I have found this collection of critical essays indespensible. The introduction sets the stage, tying together the landscape, history, and culture of the San Francisco area in order to generate a cohesive view of the literature of this region. The key question here is what makes the literature of the Bay Area distinct? What unifies the literature of this region? Fine and Skenazy present a view of Bay Area writing that ranges from the post-gold rush, pre-earthquake days of Mark Twain, Bret Harte, and Ambrose Bierce to modern voices such as Amy Tan, Richard Rodriguez and Maxine Hong Kingston. They illustrate the ways in which the literary scene of the Bay Area has grown and transformed, moving from the newsapaper articles and short stories written from a predominantly white male perspective, to a more inclusive, broder regional identity. Incidently, their definition of "San Francisco stories" is admittedly wide-ranging; they have included writers from as far afield as Santa Cruz to the south and Sacramento to the west. The essays feature analyses of the work of Frank Norris, Jack London, Dashiell Hammett, William Saroyan, Jack Kerouac, Wallace Stegner and others I've mentioned above.

While my interests in the subject at hand are mostly academic, I imagine that anyone interested in the rich--if brief--history of the Bay Area would enjoy reading these essays. As a collection, the essays raise and adress interesting questions about how a place can shape writing. They also ask the reader to look at the character of the Bay Area and consider why it is as it is--unique and complex, a land of travelers, heading forever west, hoping to strike it rich.

Enjoyable reading; especially if you are interested in past history of silver mines.

If you are going to fish The San Juan River you need this book. Heck for ... with shipping even if the book was bad it couldn't hurt but this book is really great. Shows maps of all the great spots and lots of local tips. I have used one other of the author's books and got "hooked" on their simplicity and usefulness.

I love this book so much I bought a replacement copy after the first disappeared. The photos and text are inspiring -- you'll find yourself wandering northern New Mexico to see these magnificent buildings in the flesh (as I've done twice.) The authors do an excellent job of capturing the grandeur of these monuments. This is a coffee table book with soul.

The second volume of the "Women's Biography" series, Sandra Day O'Connor: Justice In The Balance is the remarkable true story of the first female United States Supreme Court justice. From her humble beginnings on a cattle ranch, where she learned important lessons about hard work, self-reliance, and the greatness of the outdoors, to her studies at Stanford University, her struggle to find a job as a lawyer in an era when law firms did not want to hire women, the responsibility of juggling her career with marriage, politics, three children, and breast cancer, and her nomination to her judicial post of prestige by President Ronald Regan. A solid biography of the "quiet feminist", written for readers of all backgrounds, and especially recommended for school and public library collections.

I have had the visual experience of the beautiful Sangre De Christo mountain range and this book is an excellent photo representation of this virgin landscape. Sangre De Christo means "the blood of Christ". This book had VIVID pictures that took my breath away and truly made me want to go back. I really enjoyed it!

The beautiful polished black and polychrome pottery of Santa Clara Pueblo is rivaled in design and execution only by that of its neighbor, San Ildefonso, among the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico. In recent years it has been sought by growing numbers of collectors and investors. Details entire process with many photos and illustrations. -submitted by BooksDealer = Alex Silverman [taken fronm the back cover]

Writers have come to Santa Fe for decades en masse, for well over a century in a handful of cases, and for many hundreds of years if you include the fragments of myths and history hinted at through rock-pecked petroglyphs.

It was not until 1916, however, that enough writers began moving to Santa Fe that people began to refer to them all as a writers' colony. It was in 1916 that poet Alice Corbin Henderson first moved to the city, desperately hoping that New Mexico's desert climate would help to dry the tuberculosis from her lungs. As Corbin Henderson recovered, she began inviting her friends to come to visit her from other states. Many of these friends were poets and writers, and many found themselves strongly influenced by the worlds of the Western desert, the exotic mix of cultures, and the ancient past that Santa Fe had suddenly shown to them. Years went by, a spirited rivalry with the writers of Taos evolved, and writers continued to discover Santa Fe for themselves.

Some stayed for years, such as Mary Austin, author of the classic 1903 "Land of Little Rain"; and poet Witter Bynner, a man perhaps less well-known today for such books as "An Ode to Harvard and Other Poems," than for being openly homosexual in the 1920s, and for pouring a glass of beer over the head of visiting poet Robert Frost, in 1935.

Others, such as Willa Cather---who found in Santa Fe the inspiration and setting for her controversial classic, Death Comes for the Archbishop--stayed merely long enough to get an idea, get motivated, or be inspired.

Marta Weigle--a Santa Fe writer herself--is undoubtedly one of New Mexico's best historical writers, and this is one of my favorite books of hers. It's co-written with Kyle Fiore. The book details the dramatic histories of both the Santa Fe and Taos writers' colonies, and does so clearly and entertainingly, drawing effectively from the authors' rich knowlegdge of New Mexico history in general. It's full of terrific photographs, and well worth whatever you pay for it.

Highly recommended, and an excellent companion to Lynn Cline's "Literary Pilgrims," and Barbara Harrelson's "Walks in Literary Santa Fe."

This is a beautiful book, full of color photos of old and new (mostly new) Santa Fe style homes. If you are looking for how-to advice, historical description, or much text at all, this book is not for you. However, it was a perfect choice for me, since I was (still am) designing a new home and wanted a wide variety of examples of southwest homes. There are chapters on entrances, courtyards, and individual rooms, each page filled with wonderful views of both traditional and more contemporary details. The last section of the book (about 75 pages) focuses on Santa Fe arts, and features baskets, pottery, kachina dolls, furniture, sculpture, paintings and more. A friend loaned this book to me nine months ago, and after turning pages dozens of times and marking favorites with sticky notes, I finally decided to break down and give myself the gift of my own personal copy.