New Mexico Books

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.

As a native and life-long resident of Santa Fe, I was impressed by Andrew Leo Lovato's ability to capture the history and cultural minutiae of New Mexico so succintly and smoothly. For the informed Hispanic or New Mexican native, "Santa Fe Hispanic Culture: Preserving Identity in a Tourist Town" is essential. The book, a quick but dense read, is a worthwhile experience for anyone interested in the dynamic and controversial history facing today's Hispanos, Anglos and Native Americans. Lovato is one of New Mexico's prized cultural literati and his debut is informative, smoothly written and highly recommended.

Developed by The Museum of New Mexico Foundation Members and Friends, Santa Fe Kitchens: Delicious Recipes From The Southwest is a cookbook of over 300 mouth-watering dishes from a variety of accomplished Santa Fe chefs, including the proprietors of Coyote Cafe, El Farol, Harry's Roadhouse, Jinja Cafe, and many more. Sample recipes include such culinary delights as Chile Cheese Cookies, Pasta Fiesta Salad, Chicken Santa Fe, and Pinon Nut Cookies. Illustrated with vintage photographs and artworks centered around the seasonal beauty of Santa Fe, Santa Fe Kitchens is truly a "best-of-the-best" recipe book showcasing the highest talents of the local professionals, and reflecting a measure of the zest of the city itself.

Both this guide and "Children's Guide to Santa Fe" provide basic information about the usual activities and attractions popular with children in Santa Fe: the Children's Museum, Palace of the Governors, the Plaza, and lots of others. Both are great guidebooks written for parents to help them select places to visit and activities to include when they take their children to Santa Fe.

This guide is more informal than the other--breezy even--and its information seems more personalized, yet practical. It focuses more on outdoor activities, but also includes useful descriptions of child-friendly (yet interesting) restaurants. It is shorter and a little cheaper than the other.

You will likely be happy with either guidebook to help you select activities for your children to enjoy in the wonderful place that is Santa Fe.

Of course, if you are looking for a guide that is written for children rather than for parents--one that can be your child's own--I recommend I See Santa Fe!: A Children's Guide and Coloring Book

-Lynn Michelsohn, author of Roswell, Your Travel Guide to the UFO Capital of the World!

This is a great map of Santa Fe. I haven't seen anything like it until I found this map and will help me on my next trip there. Recommend it for anyone who wants to explore Santa Fe and not miss a thing.

This book is exactly what I was looking for. Perfect condition and rapid delivery. Great service.

Cleaveland, Agnes Morley, 1874-
Main Title: Satan's Paradise, from Lucien Maxwell to Fred Lambert; with decorations by Fred Lambert.
Published/Created: Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1952
Description: 274 p. illus. 22 cm.
Subjects: Lambert, Fred, 1887-
Frontier and pioneer life--New Mexico
Cimarron (N.M.)

This all volunteer effort benefiting the Roswell Symphony is an outstanding book to be savored and enjoyed for years to come. The recipes are wonderful examples of Southwestern cuisine at its best, both gourmet and everyday fare. The art work is provocative and unique to the Southwest, featuring some of todays finest working Southwestern artists. The UFO section (Ungourmet and Unusual Food Offerings) is done with tongue in cheek. Recipes for "Twilight Zone Pinto Bean Fudge", "Crash Site Chicken Chowder" and "The Great Cover Up Barbeque Sauce" are not only delicious but fun and amusing. Dion Crosby, former Executive Director of the UFO Museum wrote the forward for this section presenting data on the "1947 Roswell Incident".

An abundance of bean, grain and rice recipes (try the Black Bean Torta), inventive ways with fresh vegetables and pastas with a southwestern twist as well as different and unusual meat recipes including game and ostrich are all wonderful and original.

In my opinion, this is one of the best community cookbooks to be published in a long time; one everyone can enjoy, cook from, and just read for pleasure.

For years now Robin Coffee has hung around the shadowy edges of our eerie little town of Tahlequah, Oklahoma, the capitol of the old Cherokee Nation, now awash in retirees and injun slot machines and dominated by Walmart #10. Coffee lives with his black cat in a lttle 'giraffe' house over east of the old college inahouse hie grandparents built. I visited him recently to shoot some photos. Note the book cover. His house was barely furnished, severai old wood tables were covered, littered with his handwritten and typed MS. For year my friends and I have called on Robin to read his poems at ceremonies and auspicious events that mark local Cherokee life. Once when James Earl Jones came here he selected and read Coffee's poem 'Artists and Musians'
Coffee is a powerful and unassuming force of nature and like the great Chilian poet Pablo Neruda, his work displays that attribute clearly. I will make no other comparisons for now, his work stands as written.

This imaginative book is a lovely introduction to the variety of opportunities in the southwest. Well organized and cross-indexed, it presents an inviting description of not only where, but also when, to find spectacular natural events. The well-written Seasonal Guide is a pleasure to read and indispensable for planning an itinerary.