Pajaro Verde: The Green Bird is an enchanting bilingual English/Spanish fairy tale about many-eyed sisters and an enigmatic prince named Pajaro Verde. Illustrated with beautifully rendered and realistic color artwork of fabulous scenes and events, Pajaro Verde is an unforgettable picture book story for young readers and would be a welcome addition to any school or community library collection.

(From Planeta magazine): Mexico's fiery cuisines stand in sharp contrast not only with traditional European cooking but also with each other. The regional variations and menus make Mexican cuisine one of the most sophisticated in the world. In a new book published as part of the University of New Mexico Press's Dialogos series, author Jeffrey Pilcher uses food itself to provide a unique, insider's guide to Mexican history and politics.

ÁQue vivan los Tamales!: Food and the Making of Mexican Identity (ISBN 0-8263-1873-8, 234 pages, University of New Mexico Press, 1998,$16.95 or $37.50 hardback (ISBN 0-8263-1872-X) examines the evolution of mestizo recipes - the blending of Old and New World spices to make the famous turkey mole or gourmet flourishes, such as cuitlacoche rolled in crepes and covered with bechamel sauce.

The author praises the creative role cookbook authors played in unifying the country's taste buds, especially in the 19th and 20th centuries when a national identify was being forged and the construction of railroads and highways lowered the costs of distribution of exotic agricultural products so that local specialties could be enjoyed throughout the country.

Much of the book traces the differences and debates stirred by promoters of maize and wheat. Elites often criticized maize, and even suggested that the corn-eating population was at a serious disadvantage in terms of development. Their reasoning: the wheat-consuming Europeans were on top of the world, not the corn-eating Americans or rice-eating Asians. But such prejudices were not easily resolved. The problem was (and is) that corn simply grows better in Mexico than wheat.

It's hard to understand the desire upper-class Mexicans had to break from their indigenous heritage. Throughout the colonial period, corn was under attack and likewise the construction of homes and buildings using adobe, a centuries-old technique used the world over and perfected in many of the regions in Mexico.

Instead, colonial architects favored European-styled architecture, European-styled clothes and European-styled foods. Pilcher explains the logic of the time: "One did not have to be born a European, it was sufficient to act like one, dress like one, and eat like one."

In reality, Pilcher says that "the tortilla discourse really served as a subterfuge to divert attention to social inequalities... Rural malnutrition resulted not from any inferiority in tortillas; instead, poverty, particularly the lack of land, made it impossible to obtain a well-balanced diet."

The book is loaded with colorful tidbits, such as Christopher Columbus' description of lizard : "tastes like chicken," he said -- perhaps using this present-day cliche for the very first time.

Pilcher also recounts how during the colonial period more beef was available than wheat bread. Priests were slow and often hesitant to use corn for communion wafers, though chocolate was sometimes consumed (covertly) at mass.

The author's dry humor exerts itself in numerous passages, such as the discussion of how Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera's criticisms of the then-prevalent prejucides against indigenous culture (and food) were subsequently taken up by the Middle and upper classes themselves.

The end of the book reviews 20th century innovations, focusing on the automation of the corn milling and tortilla-preparing appliances, the development of the chain supermarkets and the new fame given to cookbook authors, such as Diana Kennedy, who received the Aztec Eagle award, the Mexican government's highest honor given to foreigners.

If there is a problem with this book, it would be the author's penchant for odd transitions. He discusses the artful blending of recipes and fiction in the best-selling novel Like Water for Chocolate and moves effortless from a discussion of eroticism to a discourse on public hygiene. I read this paragraph several times without understanding the tread of logic.

His criticisms of Taco Bell and U.S. fast food franchises in general bring the book to a close, but perhaps this, too, is a form of cultural blending that could be examined with a little more depth.

But it's best not to be too harsh on the author, who has compiled an encyclopedic amount of information in ÁQue vivan los Tamales!. The author's clever synthesis of nutrition facts, national politics and regional idiosyncrasies breaks new ground.

Author Pilcher would be the ideal dinner guest at any Mexican table. It's obvious that any omissions in Que vivan los Tamales! were a result of a lack of space, not knowledge. This book serves up a veritable smorgasbord of ideas, history and observations and is highly recommended.

This book has 29 true short stories of people who lived in New Mexico, when it was a territory. Each story is about 2-5 pages long. There are some black and white pictures of these same people included in the book.

What a wonderful book. I particularly liked these were people who lived in New Mexico and that I could look at the pictures of each person as I read about them. This author has certainly done a lot of research. I have read a lot of New Mexico history and this book is gem. Many of the stories were ones that I had never heard before. Because the stories are short, it is easy to pick the book up for 15 or 20 minutes, read a story and put it down without losing your place. I appreciated the humor that Marc Simmons displays through out this book, many of these short stories end on a humorous note.

This is a great book about the people who lived in New Mexico when it was still being formed into a state. It certainly provides a history of New Mexico through a different slant. I enjoyed every minute of reading it. My husband read it and enjoyed it as well.

Unlike other disorienting works by other authors in this field, you can depend on this work to keep you headed in the right direction at all times (or time zones, as the case may be). Just remember to fold properly between chapters (outings?) and always remember that anytime you're going uphill, you're pointed north.

As a native of Northern New Mexico, I often see all sorts of photo books documenting the touristic attractions to the area. However, Alex Harris' book acurately documents the real life of rural northern New Mexico. The best you could buy!!

In this book, Deena Gonzalez made women like my ancestral grandmothers come alive. I used what I learned from Dr. Gonzalez's book to annotate a speaker presentation that I developed and an academic article that I wrote. The subject women's courage and strength made me proud to know more about my Spanish-Mexican grandmothers and to claim my own ethnic identity. The study that Dr. Gonzalez conducted tells how the women of that time in Santa Fe suffered and their loss in status after the American take over. I highly recommend this book for students and anyone who wants to know more about the women of the period.

The majority of this collection is from the Southwest or Mexico but interestingly there are similar pieces from less expected places e.g. Eastern US, central Europe, the Philippines. A significant number of the pieces are pictured. The text mixes technical information about the art pieces with information about how they came into the collection. The art itself ranges from primitive to superb folk art - executed in a variety of media. Among the pieces that catch my attention is a crucifix with an angel at Jesus' side and the retablo of Our Lady of Refuge.

This is an excellent volume for those interested in folk devotional art or Mexican / Southwestern art.

From El Planeta Platica Lawrence Taylor and Maeve Hickey's The Road to Mexico (University of Arizona Press, 1997) offers a delicious narrative and evocative photos on the blue highways stretching from Tucson, Arizona to Magdalena de Kino, Sonora. "The Old Nogales Highway is a road, like the fabled Route 66, shares in an American romance different from that of that of the interstate. Here, the up-to-date sits awkwardly, unstylishly cheek by jowl with the embarrassingly eccentric and the downright ugly." (p. 58) Proving that travel is best enjoyed when it's not rushed, the authors take time to talk to the people who live in the Sonoran Desert. Anthropologist Taylor quotes a wide range of people from American Automobile Association clerks "Lots of cars get stolen down there" to muralists to cattle ranchers. The book finds its voice in this regional chorus and turns its focus on picturesque characters, such as the U.S.-borne mariachi who won't cross the borderline: "Fernando was not about to risk the Mexico of his imagination, of his mariachi, by penetrating that border. He would consider flying over it, landing in the center of the nation, in the Guadalajara of Mariachi Vargas, but Fernando Sanchez was not going to take the road to Mexico." (p. 9)

I found the book extremely useful for the report I had to write on the Roswell "Conspiracy". Backing up statements and theories with clear facts, it makes speculations sound plausible to even some of the most disbelieving readers. Having had no previous knowledge on the Roswell matter, the book filled me in on the details and then some. I got an A on the report and I give the book 5 stars! :)

The Roswell Report produced by the headquarters of the united states airforce, once and for all debunks all the crazy and wacked theories flying around (yepp, flying...stelthing...you name it they are out there) that there was an alien spacship that crashed at the famous location, i.e., Roswell. There are plenty of documents here that not only debunk these wild theories, they substanitiate the governments claim of testing military baloons. Highly Recommended.