New Mexico Books

If you are as interested as i am in Ancient Mesoamerican cultures such as the Maya, you will love this book. Some of the language may be a bit difficult, though author explains it well. Its not for the beginner but definelty best choice book after reading Michael Coe's "primer" book on the MAYA. The photography is incredible also.

While reading Dan McCall's short novel Messenger Bird, I had to keep returning to the book jacket to remind myself that this was a novel, rather than a particularly engaging and sensitive memoir. Told in the first person, McCall's book recounts two years in the life of a young surgeon, Jim, paying off his medical school loans by working at a small hospital in New Mexico on an Apache reservation. The "messenger bird" of the title is Annie Messenger Bird Lester Mendez, a gifted nurse at the hospital who becomes Jim's lover and best insight into the Indian community. Much of this novel is episodic -- medical emergencies confronted by Jim, or his life in the community. Through these vignettes McCall constructs a community, two characters (Jim and Annie) and a larger social structure that resonate with compassion and truth. I read this short book in two sittings, and wished it were half again as long. Highly recommended.

This text is ideal for undergraduate and graduate students/faculty in Rhetoric, Composition, English, Chicano/a Studies, American Indian & Mesoamerican Studies, and Postcolonial Studies.

I grew up in Mexico and I grew up reading this book. To revist its light prose, delicately drawn village and carefully delineated shadows was an incredible pleasure. I'm so glad I have this copy in my possesion, I've missed it.
I wish I knew more about Josephina Nigli, though.

The Mexican War Correspondence of Richard Smith Elliott, edited and annotated by Mark L. Gardner and Marc Simmons, University of Oklahoma Press, 1997, xi + 292 pgs. The book consists of what the title says it does, plus some useful material written later by Elliott but appropriately inserted by the editors. Elliott was an elected Lieutenant in the Laclede Rangers which was a unit from St. Louis and a part of the Missouri Volunteers, in turn a part of Kearny1s Army of the West during the Mexican War. Irregularly, from May 1846 to July of the next year, Elliott sent dispatches back to the St. Louis Daily Reveille, writing as John Brown. In brief, Lt. Elliott with his outfit went from his home to Santa Fe, where with few exceptions, he remained throughout his term of enlistment. Compared to many other soldiers of that time, he led an easy life. (After all, many of us pay to live in Santa Fe, although arguably the amenities may be somewhat better than they were 150 years ago.) However, Elliott's descriptions of the marches, Bent's Fort, Santa Fe and its inhabitants including the native ladies, are most interesting, as are his opinions of some of his associates and high-ranking commanders. The Introduction is helpful and the notes, we think, are the main achievement of the editors: erudite, expansive as need be, and interesting on their own ‹ as you might expect from those two well-known historians. Notes are what turns diaries or dispatches into histories; in this case a valuable piece of New Mexico history and an excellent view of a minuscule part of the Mexican War.

This series is great for emergent readers and ESOL students. I really appreciate these authors for the service they have done in writing these books.

I'm not that fond of Lázaro Cárdenas or his legacy, but this book showed me a different side of him that made me realize he was a far more complex, shrewd, practical and wiser man than I initially thought him to be.

However slanted the author's appraisal of his subject may seem to me (I'm sorry but Mr. Cárdenas was more of a cacique than a democrat, if he ever was one), the book is full of facts, many of them unknown to most Mexicans, and makes an interesting reading. I thoroughly enjoyed it!

Mexico Way is an excellent read. The plot is believeable and the action gripping. Jim Kreeger is very credible as an aging, but savvy CIA COS. So are all the other characters. The book exposes both Mexican and Belt Way politics for what they often are: corrupt and self-serving. Throughout the book, I often asked myself: could this really happen? And the answer was almost always YES. Moss does an excellent job of fleshing out both the plot and the characters. Looking for more Moss works now.

The French photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson travelled to Mexico as a member of an expedition that planned to work on the Pan-American Highway. When the project collapsed, Cartier-Bresson decided to stay on in Mexico where he became friends with the gifted Mexican photographer Manuel Alvarez Bravo. In 1935, Mexico's principle art museum, El Palacio de Bellas Artes organized a show entitled, "Fotografias Cartier-Bresson-Alvarez Bravo." The American writer Langston Hughes wrote the text for the catalogue.

When the show ended in Mexico City, the avant garde gallery owner Julien Levy brought the exhibit to New York City. Levy had the brilliant idea of adding the American photographer Walker Evans to the exhibition. Thus the works of three of great Modernist photographers of the 1930's were brought together under one roof. The photographs presented in this book have become iconic images and will be instantly familiar to students of the era.

Sixty seven years after the New York show to commemorate the celebration of Alvarez Bravo's Centenary Birthday, the curators of the Palacio de Bellas Artes decided to bring the works of these three masters together once again. This book is the catalogue of that celebration. Not many art books are published in Mexico. However, when books are released, the publishers create beautiful collector's editions. This is high quality production with beautiful photographs printed on the best quality paper. This modestly priced book is a must purchase for all lovers of Modernist photography. This is a highly recommended book that will become collectable in time.

Recommended for anyone who has an interest in Mexican art.