More Than Petticoats: Remarkable New Mexico Women is an excellent sampling of women in New Mexico history. This book offers brief biographies of women, crossing ethnic and cultural barriers and spanning several hundred years of herstory. Some of the women included in this volume are Mabel Dodge Luhan (patron of early Southwest Arts), Mary Colter (Fred Harvey/Santa Fe Railroad architect), Georgia O'Keefe (aritist), Maria Martinez (potter),and Elsie Clews Parsons (anthropolgist). Seven other women or groups of women (like the Harvey Girls) are also included. This enjoyable book of significant women is a wonderful volume for those who would like to know a little about a lot of people from one book. I particularly appreciated the regional/state focus because I was familiar with most of the women written about. "More Than Petticoats" is a series focusing on the women who were influential in individual states, and I would definately read more from this series!

It is with envy that we European botanists see the publication of bryological books in the United States. The two volumes about the moss flora of Mexico are a superb example of how well written bryological books can be. The Flora is beautifully illustrated, the keys work and the descriptions are excellent. Everybody only remotely interested in this group of plants will gladly welcome it as an addition to their collection.

From cover to cover this guide allows you to follow it's contents easily and affectively. You won't be wasting your ride time figuring out where to go. The maps are easy to read, giving you just the right information. There are graphs that show you distance in relation to elevation, a real helpful tool in guaging if this ride will be what you want. It also discribes terrain and gives a scale of difficulty to aide in the decision making. I enjoy carring this book with me when I ride because it is so easy to use. I would highly recomend this and other Falcon guides to any avid mountain biker like myself.

This is a sweet, tender collection of the author's recollections of growing up in an Albuquerque neighborhood with both a grocery store, where he worked, and the Catholic Church, which he attended. He writes of his neighbors with gentle wit and wisdom and reveals their souls in a manner that will make you proud that such a poet exists to give substance to the bricks and mortar of a neighborhood. Lopez teaches in the English Department of Mesa State College in Grand Junction, CO. What a wonderful, inspiring poet.

Fray Angelico Chavez takes us on a tour de force ride through the landscape of the Southwest and especially of New Mexico. This is a magical romp through history of the New World as pertaining to the New Mexico, which is the land, where Fray Angelico Chavez feels at home in. This is a fictionalized historical account, which seems fantastic at time, and it is very addictive read, considering that it deals with history, but does so in very entertaining, and magnetic way. Anyone interested in the Southwest should read this book as it will enlighten, and educate. It contains classical, biblical, and native american allusions, references, and influences. The brethen of Don Quixote also make appearance, and seem very much at home in the strange landscape of the new world. Penitentes walk through bearing their crosses. Read it, and you will never look at the Southwest in quite the same way again.

The editiorial reviews available on this fine publication only hint at its value to preservationists, architects, and anyone involved with architectural design review boards. Wilson provides a concise history of Santa Fe and the cross-cultural influences that have shaped its architecture. Most importantly, the author examines the influence that early 20th century historic preservation philosophies had in formalizing what has ultimately become the "Santa Fe Sytle." This is essential material for anyone interested in examining how historic preservation can impact, both positively and negatively, contemporary architectural aesthetics.

Thomas J. Steele's New Mexican Spanish Religious Oratory 1800-1900 is a well-researched collection of orations and sermons delivered to the devout parishioners of various parishes and congregations in colonial and territorial New Mexico. He begans his work with a rich sermon delivered on Good Friday by Mexican-born Manuel Antonio Garcia del Valle, a Franciscan priest then assigned to Nambe Pueblo. While Steele disects the form and structure of the sermon, he inherently reveals something of the academic or intellectual strength also found in Nuevo Mexico in the early 1800's. Essentially, while the Church and general populace of Nuevo Mexico are frequently described as lacking in organization, learnedness, and culture in that era, Steele produces evidence of all of these elements.

Steele then provides three orations of the infamous Padre Antonio Jose Martinez. Here, the reader is exposed to . . . something of the substance of the man. In reviewing his sermons, one begins to know more personally a young Padre Martinez --who was cordial to non-Catholic Clergymen, who early-on embraced the leadership of his eventual nemesis (Bishop Lamy), and who cherished the notion of America's liberty for all men.

Other sermons and teaching by Joseph P. Machebeuf, Lamy himself, and other Presbyterian and Methodist figureheads are then provided. Again, the sermons are but the first view at what Steele undoubtably intends, --to give meaning and context to our view of an earlier era in New Mexico, to personalize the participants, --both orators and parishioners, for the reader.

In summary, the content of Steele's work is a fine and authentic example of Christianity as it was delivered to Nuevo Mexicanos in the 1800-1900's. Just as important, he critiques his orators every step of the way, permitting us not only to see their writing and hear their sermons, --but to come to know the values of the man, the orator, and his intentions for his listeners.

This book is a "must" for any serious student of New Mexico history.

Don and Barbara Laine have done an outstanding job in this book. I live in New Mexico and we just bought a camper, so I went to the library to get some book on where to go camping. I borrowed a couple of guides for the Southwest, but this book is the only one that anybody ever needs. Every State Park is listed in detail, even little maps for each Park are included. Furthermore they tell you exactly what to expect from each park and what there is to do. This comes in handy when travelling with kids. Equipped with this book we already went to 2 State Parks and found exactly what the Laines had described. This book is a must have for anybody that wants to explore Arizona and New Mexico.

I've travelled New Mexico extensively and love each new scene. Upon opening this book I was flooded with the sense of being back in the places that brought me so much joy the first time around. The pictures are fabulous and convey so much of the true atmosphere found only in the high mountain desert. I will make a present of this book more than once.

Spanning the years 1840 to 1890, New Mexico In The Nineteenth Century by Andrew K. Gregg is an impressive and informative "picture history" of New Mexico's history and features more than 500 original woodcuts and steel engravings by 19th Century artists and explorers. Replete with scenes of Indian pueblos, Spanish villages, and frontier army posts, the engaging text draws from diverse sources as the journals of early travelers, long out of print books, official reports. Each illustrations is enhanced with an accompanying text and is identified as to its source. New Mexico In The Nineteenth Century is a unique and highly recommended contribution to American Frontier History in general New Mexico historical studies in particular.