I was given the opportunity to catalog Dr. Gentry's herbarium collection at the Desert Botanical Garden in 1987-88. I haven't seen the new edition mentioned here, but read the original work at the time I was cataloging his herbarium specimens. Through it, I was able to share his experience as an explorer in the spirit of John Wesley Powell, someone who knew that the American southwest is best delineated by watersheds, not along false lat/long lines. I met Dr. Gentry a couple of times, and remember the occasions well. Last time I saw him, when I was cataloging his collection, I overheard a conversation between him and a consultant for the Fort McDowell Indian Community. The consultant was asking about desert-adapted crop plants. Dr. Gentry went into great detail describing many desert plants suited to agriculture - tepary beans, jojoba, Lippia (Mexican oregano), agave, chiltepines, gum arabic, etc. I learned a lot just by eavesdropping. The consultant listened, but did not hear the words. He recommended that the Fort McDowell people plant cotton. Not because it was best suited to desert agriculture - far from that. They planted cotton because it needs vast quantities of water. They did not want the best desert-adapted crops. What they wanted, instead, was the best crop for wasting water, so that they could establish valid rights to the water. Worse, I watched them clear off vast acreages of mesquite forests to make room for the water-wasting cotton crop. The Hopi call this koyaanisqatsi. This book should help folks in southwestern north America realize that we have a bounteous resource, if we can only learn to use it.

Located in a transition zone between the Sonoran Desert and the tropics,this region is well known for its biodiversity, thanks to a 1942 study by botanist Howard Scott Gentry. Revision of his classic work began before his death in 1993. For researchers, this is a must-read book. It provides a clear overview of botanical studies of the Rio Mayo, a contemporary view of the vegatation, excerpts from the original text and an annotated list of plants.

This is a great book for the casual reader on archaeology! The essays are entertaining, yet still enlightening, and are beneficial for both the newcomer to New Mexico and the long-time fan.

This is an excellent book for those who are just getting interested in Southwest or New Mexico Archaeology. Definately a must read!

Not only is this a great guide to edible plants, but it has some of the most tasty and unique recipes I have ever seen.

This is a grand book for nature-lovers, gourmet cooks, and wild plant enthusiasts. It's written with clarity and a touch of humor. Where else could you find recipes for Oaxaca Iceplant Salsa, Stir-fried Saltbush, and Canaigre Sauce? With excellent illustrations and photographs of each plant, this book is a joy to read.

Laura Curtin lived and worked among the curanderas and Native Americans of Northern New Mexico during the early part of the twentieth century. She fell in love with the plants and their lore, and later, at the prompting of a friend, decided to record them. Healing Herbs was first published in 1947, at a time when interest in traditional healing in Northern New Mexico was in decline. It helped preserve traditional information for a new generation -- when editor Michael Moore arrived in Santa Fe in the 1960s he found copies of Curtin's book as a prized possession in many traditional households. The book is unique in the literature of ethnobotany in that it was written essentially by an insider in the tradition, rather than by an observer doing interviews.

Living in the Southwestern Chihuahuan desert, I am always on the search for sources of information regarding local flora and particularly ethnobotanical uses of plants. This is an excellent guide originally published in 1947 and edited by Michael Moore who I consider to be an expert on herbal uses of native southwestern plants. For anyone interested in this subject, a fabulous resource to have in your library!

This book has received an Award of Excellence for book design in the 2001 Southern Books Competition. "Lovely green cloth binding opens to stunning title page typography that sits upon faint leaves. The typographic design is classic without being boring. Details, like the screened-back ornaments on the Contents page speak to the refinement of the design." Congratulations to the author and illustrator, designer Ellen McKie, and the University of Texas Press.

If you are serious about learning more about plants, all forms of propogation, then this is the book for you. It gets technical, but again, if you are serious, then you can figure it out. Comprehensive, well organized, good drawings, good glossary (no pronunciation guide though)and good index. A must have reference. Thanks to Ms Nokes.

[reprinted courtesy of The Times-Picayune (New Orleans)]

"KENTE CLOTH" WADES INTO STORYTELLERS' WATERS

From a full-length performance poem in script form to a teen-ager's image-laden perception of self, "Kente Cloth: Southwest Voices of The African Diaspora" (University of North Texas Press) revives on paper the ancient tradition of "griots" or storytellers. James Mardis, an award-winning poet and radio commentator in Dallas, has compiled an anthology that features mostly unpublished writers. Collecting the work of more than 45 scribes primarily from Louisiana and Texas, Mardis has succeeded in capturing the rhythm-and-blues lives of people in a common-folk vernacular. Simple, earnest and true. "Kente Cloth" is divided into four basic categories: Witnesses, Performers, Tellers and Signifiers, with a range of styles and tales that tantalize the reader into jumping into a pool of griots. Jesse Truvillion's "A Stray Dog's Great Day," Nadir Bomani's "Someone's Knockin' at My Door" and Phyllis Allen's "The Red Swing" run the gamut from tribute to modern-day vignette. The poetry of Monica Denise Spears, Bertram Barnes, Zenaura Melynia Smith, Gayle Bell, Freddi Evans, Glenn Joshua, Mawiyah Bomani and Kalamu ya Salaam are lyrical emotion-rides, while the prose of Bernestine Singley, Charley Moon, and James Thomas Jackson invoke fiery responses. "Lovve/Rituals & Rage" by Sharon Bridgforth brings the joy of performance art to the page and the gentle "Soul Soother" by Zenaura Smith, a freshman at John Ehret High School (in New Orleans), offers a touch of innocent love. Even editor Mardis slips in a folktale and a couple of poems, most notably "Sting," an ode that balances lemonade and death. A dozen New Orleans writers add their unique perspectives to this collection, including Michael Ollie Clayton, saddi khali, Cassandra Bailey, Nadir Bomani, Barnes, Evans, Joshua, Perkins, Salaam, Smith, Spears and Mawiyah Bomani. The African-American literary scene is a steadily evolving and expanding landscape, and "Kente Cloth" turns the spotlight around to shine on the South. Mardis wanted this collection to represent the joy of the oral tradition, "The elders may be gone in body, but their lessons linger in the living and sharing of these stories, poems and plays. Listen for the voices...the oral dance of tongue to teeth and song to heart." "Kente Cloth" is a visual tribute to the legions of unscripted griots and a worthy addition to any shelf that holds African-American literature.

The introduction of this book is almost as good as the fiction and poetry inside. Mardis talks about how these writers are connected even though they live in the five state southwest area. He is right. They are writing about their lives and about how we are more connected by experience than other writing will have us believe. If these are the new black writers of the southwest, boy the New York publishers have really missed the boat!

There are numerous petroglyphs and pictographs throughout the American Southwest. Some of that artwork created between 200 B.C. until the 17th century, show Kokopelli, the fluteplayer -- a sacred figure to Native Americans as well as modern popular culture icon of the region.

The geologists Dennis Slifer and James Duffield introduce the reader to the world of Kokopelli, describing his many guises by analyzing dozens of rock art sites. Moreover, they also take a closer look at how Kokopelli is represented in ceramics and kiva murals. The study is rounded off by mentioning the myth surrounding Kokopelli and by telling some Native American stories about the often humpbacked fluteplayer who symbolizes fertility among other things.

The book is richly illustrated with maps, sketches, black and white as well as a few colored photos. Artists will surely be inspired by the multitude of Kokopelli portrayals as well as other petroglyph motives. This excellent study is also recommendable for everyone interested in this part of American Southwestern history.

I gambled when I ordered this book, since I hadn't a clue what I'd find inside. And this gamble paid off! What a fantastic compilation of kokopelli imagery....a marvelous source of inspiration for my own carving work. You will find photographic documentation of the original petroglyphs as well as line-drawings....masses of them! And the discussion of the mythology behind kokopelli gives life to these spritely images. One of the best buys I've made this year! I've recommended it to others I know who work with ancient imagery.

The collaboration of biographer Karen Holliday Tanner and western history expert John D. Tanner, Jr. (Professor of History, Palomar College, San Marcos, California), Last Of The Old-Time Outlaws: The George West Musgrave Story is the informed and informative account of the notorious bandit, robber, and killer of the American Southwest, George West Musgrave (1877-1947), who was a charter member of the High Five/Black Jack gang, which in turn was responsible for Arizona's first bank hold-up as well as many other robberies. Only the ravages of failing health brought an end to Musgrave's crimes. Last Of The Old-Time Outlaws is enthusiastically recommended as being an absorbing biography of one of a rare oxymoron -- a successful career criminal.

Here was an old time outlaw that didn't cotton to spending time in jail, fumbling robberies, or getting perforated by Banana Republic Keystone Cops. He was in the mold of O. Henry's bad guys in Cabbages and Kings. Further, he died a happy, affluent rascal, just as he lived - and get this - in 1947. Plenty living still remember this outlaw and to John Tanner who wrote the book with his wife, Karen (Doc Holliday, A Family Portrait: she is Doc's closest living blood relative) George Musgrave was more of an in-law than an outlaw. John is related to him so many ways it's hard to keep them straight, but John can, and does.

Karen tells a great story about her husband when they were at a Texas shindig, among Musgrave's relatives, (i.e. like John that's almost everyone is south Texas) where some disgruntled local accosted her and said: "All of these people think they're related to each other." Karen said without hesitation and with not the foggiest idea who this fellow was: "I'll bet you a bunch my husband is related to you and can prove it." She brought John over and they did prove it. The fellow simply scratched his head.

John is not only related to all the participants on the Taylor side of the bloody Sutton/Taylor feud (but I'd bet he's related to some on the other side). Moreover he's related to half the people down here in my neck of the woods, and most of them were related to George Musgrave. Take Howard Lindsay who ran the Boot Hill Museum in Tombstone for years. He's a second something or other to both George and John. So, if you think John doesn't know what he's writing about here, blame it on the relatives who were there and told him - and showed him the pictures, by gum, and a lot of them are in this book, and talk about damned interesting faces.

George was no joke, however. He rode up to an ex-Texas Ranger who was a foreman on the famed Diamond A Ranch out here in my neck of the woods, recognized him as the SOB who had killed one of his relatives, and burned him down without hesitation. George must have been all of nineteen at the time. His horse must have been a lot younger than that because when he split the breeze no one caught him.

Ever hear of the High Five Gang? George was a stalwart. This was an outfit that didn't shoot itself in the foot blowing up a RR car and leaving the pieces all over the landscape. They got the loot. And they evaded such legendary lawmen as George Scarborough, Jeff Milton, John Slaughter, Billy Breakenride (who finally became a lawman after leaving Tombstone and his Sweetie, Curly Bill and hero John Ringo, "the gunfighter who never was") and others.

Emil Franzi, fabled Tucson radio personality (when the mood strikes him to air his show) phoned here the other day and had just finished the book and was raving: "Forget those other phonies, like Butch and Sundance! This SOB is the real McCoy!" Besides that he could read, brushed his teeth, washed his feet regularly and knew how to order in French from a menu. Honest Injun.

My advice it the read this mother and find out for yourself. If Hollywood doesn't discover that it's been barking up the wrong trees for years and zero in on this badman, I miss my guess. Probably years too late and after being dragged to the party, but I predict this one will burn down the barn when they finally film it.

And it's just plain fun reading. It's full of peripheral characters like John's uncle who periodically phones him - usually on a dead Sunday - and says John, "Let's go shoot us a Sutton." This is, as I recall, the same uncle who wires buzzard wings on dead armadillos and puts them in the road for some dumb tourist to stop and gawk at, whereupon he comes out with a shotgun and cusses them out for "killin' the last danged winged armadillo in Texas."

Come to think about it the authors here, and the characters they know that are still around kicking, are as interesting as their protagonist.

This book methodically moves through Peter MacDonald's political life, but offers a biting criticism of the hypocritical nature of American politics. How can it be, MacDonald ask, that congressional people can do what I did, and NOT be held accountable for their actions? This compelling question is often repeated throughout the book & does deserve serious treatment by Indian and nonIndian scholars alike. MacDonald also eludes of "two standards of justice" for American politicians, an undisputed standard that is clearly separated by color! This book is essential reading for those interested in the rise and fall of a modern-day Indian leader and the compromises he has made to maintain his political life.

Great comprehensive look into the making of a Navajo leader. From Peter MacDonald's birth to his incarceration he wanted only to serve his people. The book is also a great historical look at the dynamics of Navajo tribal government and politics. He was truly a leader of his people who had the vision and the foresight to take on the "great" United States. Even 500 years plus, the U.S. is still taking down Indian leaders today! Write U.S. President Clinton for Peter MacDonald's release from federal prison today

The Legend of the Whistle Pig Wrangler, written by Kate Allen is a wonderful, exciting, enjoyable book that no household should go without. I have enjoyed this book for 2 years now. It has an amazing plot with wonderful illustrations. This book is a must have.

This cute story about a whistle pig (marmot) wrangler with a big smile and the talent to whistle "tickles" your heart. The illustrations are fantastic and are what drew me to the book originally. The brilliance of the picture detail make the character's eyes look real and the story come to life. There is even a illustrative spoof on a Dolittle painting. The glossary of cowboy lingo was quite helpful while my daughter was reading the story to me. Your childen will enjoy having this book as a part of their book collection - it won't stay on the shelf!