This bilingual picture book tells the story of poet Juan Felipe Herrera's early years with his parents who were migrant farmworkers in California. Herrera's love for his poor hardworking parents is evident. The vibrant, vivid pictures by Elly Simmons combine with Herrera's Spanish/English text to make a delightful children's book that readers of all ages will enjoy!

In Aubagne France, on April 30 of every year, a wooden hand is solemnly paraded in a ceremony commemorating the most sacred battle of the French Foreign Legion. In a dusty hamlet in a remote corner of Mexico, Captain Danjou, the owner of the hand, and 64 other Legionnaires held off a force of over 2000 Mexicans, until the last handful of survivors, wounded and out of ammunition, prepared a bayonet charge. Camerone exemplifies the courage and sacrifice of the Legion, in a tradition which is carried forth even today. The story is told well here,with clear maps and illustrations.

I just received my map and it's jam packed with information all in one place. It's organized very well and has very current information. It's easy to read and much easier to carry around rather than a book. I have not taken my trip to Cancun yet but have made many plans based on the information provided in this map. I highly suggest anyone going to Cancun get this map.

Read this book, when I was too young to understand the real meaning... Then, after feeling nostalgic towards my childhood, I ran into it again. Changed (or maybe reminded me) some paradigms in life. Must read it to understand in a simple description: love, death, eternity, peace, friendship and inmensity. The small things that turn life into something whole.

It would be foolish to give a book that won three prestigious professional awards (the Bancroft, Turner, and Parkman prizes) all in one year anything less than five stars, but the stars I have given this book can only hint at its remarkable contents. Captives and Cousins is based on prodigious research in original sources, and the research is wedded to a compelling and innovative analysis.
Brooks is not the first historian to show that the practice of taking captives and subjecting them to involuntary servitude was widespread in the American Southwest, but I don't think that anyone else has demonstrated so convincingly how deep and wide the cycle of capture and slavery was. Virtually all of the peoples who lived in and around New Mexico in the three centuries following the Spanish entrada (Native Americans and Europeans alike) took captives and engaged to one degree or another in the slave trade. Indians preyed on Spanish and Mexicans, and on themselves, and the Spanish and Mexicans returned the favor. To a degree, even Americans played a role in the trade after they became the controlling force in the region. They offered rewards for the return of captives and thus provided incentives for further captures. Brooks shows that the system of capture and slavery contributed in significant ways to the political, economic, and cultural development of the Southwest, providing a ready source of labor (and wives), knitting disparate peoples into webs of kinship (some biological, some adoptive, some deriving from Catholic godparenthood), helping to equalize wealth, and provoking endless cycles of revenge and retaliation. The system (a kind of "war of all against all") had its own logic, though the logic was crude and in many respects cruel.
Brooks does not saddle Europeans with all of the blame for the system. He makes it clear that capture and enslavement were practiced before the Spanish first arrived in the Southwest. But they participated in it and added refinements derived from their own Iberian traditions. In one sense, the book helps to challenge the myth of Indians as indigenous peoples "operating within subsistence-and-exchange economies that produced little intergroup conflict." Conflict there was, and in spades.
Brooks is an academic, and the book is addressed primarily to his fellow academics. General readers will find the text too dense for easy reading. I found some parts of the book slow going, but I persisted and, in the end, was glad I did. Captives and Cousins not only informed me; it made me think.

If you're a caver or just interested in caving, this book is a lot of fun. The Guadalupe Mountains of New Mexico are home to some of the world's most beautiful caves, including Carlsbad Caverns and Lechuguilla Cave. This book describes Robert Nymeyer's adventures and misadventures with his buddies in the high Guadalupe caves. The descriptions of early vertical caving techniques using lariats and the photographs taken with flash powder are priceless examples of what folks will do when bitten by the exploration bug.

This book is one of the few book that looks at history through the eyes of contemporary survivors. It is well written and it should be of interest to any scholar and student needing a text dealing with cultural changes and modern economic pressures. I would recommend it also for suplement in any class on modern Mexican history.

An amazing collection of archeological artifacts await the reader who is able to locate this gem of a book. Originally published to accompany a traveling exhibit that boasted the largest collection of Maya ritual life ever assembled., the book reflects the mysteries of the Maya.The artifacts collected and displayed from over 3,000 collected are those that were found deep within the waters of the sacred well or cenote located near the city of Chichen Itza("mouth of the well of the Itza"). This cenote, deep in the jungle of the Yucatan, is like a mini lake, with sheer vertical walls where the Mayans once stood to offer goods or human life to their gods. Having visited the cenote on a trip to the Yucatan once, it made for one of those memorable occasions that last a life time, a step back in time to a world steeped deep in ancient religion prior to the arrival of the Europeans. The cenote was a sacrificial center where the Mayans paid their spiritual debts and honored their gods with gifts made of gold, jade, copper, pottery, wood, textiles, copal and other materials including the ultimate human offering. The objects collected in this book number over 300 and are detailed in full color and black and white. The magnificent pieces are primarily from the Late Classicperiod(A. D. 690-725) through and including the Postclassic period(A.D. 900-1539). The text that accompanies this beautiful book is highly informative but not in an overly scholarly way. The descriptions of the figures sheds light on the subject for the arm chair archeologist in easly understood language without esoteric jargon. Included is a history on the collector, Edward H. Thompson, beginning with his lowering of a bucket in 1904, the burning of his "museum" after the Mexican Revolution and the settlement of the Mexican Supreme Court in favor of Thompson's heirs after his death which allowed the Harvard Peabody Museum to publish this book. Besides the absolute stunning beauty of the creations offered and sheer abundance of objects, the salvaged intact pieces are amazing to have survived so many hundreds of years in the depths of the cenote. At it's height the site rivaled a pilgrimage destination similar to Jerusalem or Rome. This is one of those books that can be viewed over and over again for inspiration or reflection on the arts and rituals of the Maya. Highly recomended for archeology , art or history buffs that want a glimse into a seldom seen collection of pieces that were unexhibited in the Peabodty Museum for over seventy years after being brought up from the silt in the cenote in the early 1900's. These are truly treasures that should not be missed if one is interested in the Maya and the Sacred Well.

Young people will be delighted in addition to being informed. And even adults will be charmed by the personal history of Gwinn Vivian, who grew up in glorious, mysterious Chaco Canyon and became the "living history" reporter on this amazing place. We are so lucky to have this book to enlighten our minds and our hearts.

Life on the Navaho reservation in New Mexico is never easy but this winter is particularly hard. The weather is abnormally cold, unemployment is up, and many people are forced to choose between eating and heating up their homes. The Tribal Council, responsible for the welfare of the people on the reservation, debates whether to legalize gambling as a way of bringing in revenue.

Navaho Special Investigator Ella Clah knows that the Indian Mafia is behind the wave of vandalism that is concentrated in the Shiprock area. The thugs hope to intimidate the people and the Tribal Council to vote for gambling and they are willing to escalate the level of violence to achieve their goals. Between tracking down the leaders of the criminal element and avoiding snipers and other assaults on her life, Ella has a thirty-six hour day just staying alive.

Amy and David Thurlo have created a mystery series that gets better with each book written though the previous novels are all top quality. Ella Clah is a fascinating character who endears herself to the audience by adhering true to her values even defending the rights of those who disagree with her. Fans of Tony Hillerman and Southwest mysteries will appreciate CHANGING WOMAN.

Harriet Klausner