Extremely difficult to find but one of the few books that is well worth the wait. Detailed drawings of bones on a single page allow for easy comparison and identifcation.

For those who have eaten at the restaurant in NY and know how good the chili is, this is your chance to try and recreate their chili. Although you'll never get your chili to taste as good as the restaurant's, it will ease your cravings until you have the chance to go to NY again. These recipes are very easy to follow and the payoff is worth it. Every friend I've given this book to has made at least 3-4 different types of the chili and have liked them all. Tenderfoots be ware!!

This book traces Twain's indebtedness to the humorists of the antebellum South and his adaptations of their literary techniques. The final chapter deals with Twain's unpublished papers, which Dr. Lynn described as "the broken ruins and unfinished monuments of a great talent." For anyone who wants to understand the provenance of Twain's art.

Wish I'd reviewed this one right after I read it, shortly after I bought the book from Amazon last year.

The author passed away on July 3rd, 2003, just a few days ago.

I enjoyed the book, written by a civilized man with a great insights into American literature, popular culture, and the human condition historically and at large.

Some chapters of the above book, such as the ones on THE WILD BUNCH and GERONIMO, are exclusively on movies. The chapters on books include:

William Faulkner's Ike McCaslin in GO DOWN, MOSES.

L. D. Clark's A BRIGHT TRAGIC THING: A TALE OF CIVIL WAR IN TEXAS, about the Great Hanging in Gainesville, Texas in 1862.

Gore Vidal's BILLY THE KID.

Jan Candia Coleman's I, PEARL HART, based upon a true story and perhaps the most interesting essay here. "About female self-assertion in a cruel, male dominated world."

Montserrat Fontes's DREAMS OF THE CENTAUR.

David Morrell's LAST REVEILLE, another fine essay that made me think I might want to read the book after all.

Mariana Azuela's LOS DE ABADJO, "a classic about the Mexican Revolution which features a band of mavericks who drift into and along with the Revolution without any clear sense of purpose."

Other essays are entitled: "The Feminizing of Freedom and Fulfillment: Como Agua Para Chocolate," "Mirrors, Dreams, and Memory: Gringo Viejo," and "Crossing Into Fascism in Bisbee 17."

Doublas Canfield earned a bachelor's degree magna cum laude from the University of Notre Dame in 1963, master's degrees from Yale and the Johns Hopkins Universities in 1964 and 1966, respectively, and a Ph.D. from the University of Florida in 1969, where he was a United States Steel Foundation Fellow and where he earned election to Phi Beta Kappa. He taught at UCLA before coming to the University of Arizona in 1974, where he became Regents Professor in 1994.

Besides the book above, Canfield was the author of several scholarly books and articles in the two fields of Restoration and early eighteenth-century British literature (particularly the drama) and comparative literature and culture of the Southwest borderlands. In the spring of 2001, he was invited to Italy, to the University of Florence to lecture in this latter field and to the University of Tuscia to lecture in the former, where a series of translations of Restoration comedies into Italian has begun in his honor.

An expert on the Restoration, he was a Renaissance Man in every sense of the word. He won several fellowships for his scholarship, the most recent from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2000-2001. He was also the winner of several teaching awards, including 1993 Arizona Professor of the Year. He was especially proud of his service to the University of Arizona as chairman of President Manuel Pacheco's Task Force on Undergraduate Education in 1991-1992.

According to Rick Wallach, president of the Cormac McCarthy Society, Canfield was also a third degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do and a national referee with AYSO. He coached his sons in several sports from the early 1970s until the mid-1990s, and co-coached and refereed a soccer team with his son Colin as recently as the fall 2002. His other hobbies were hunting and writing poetry, of which he has two books published. He has also authored a poetic drama on John Charles Fremont.

Rick Wallach, in a tribute to him at the McCarthy Society from which much of this review is garnered, said, "All of us who knew Doug were aware of his passionate commitment to social justice, and his favorite course to teach was "The Ideology of Human Rights," His last wish was for world peace with justice. . ."

"Doug's wonderful long essay on Cormac McCarthy's Suttree, which he read at the Society's annual conference in Tucson last year, will be published sometime in the (we hope) near future..."

The recipes in this book are excellent! It is filled with great Southern recipes! They are the ones that are usually passed on by word of mouth from generation to generation. It is great to find them all in one book.

I've known John Sedlar since the mid 70's and eaten in several of the restaurants he's worked in and owned. In 1976 John started introducing his southwestern style recipes into the menu of "The Silo" in Manhattan Beach CA. they were a hit with the customers and I for one wanted some of his recipes. This book is the answer to my prayers, I have prepared many of the recipes and have not been disappointed with the results. the recipes are presented in a clear and consise manner with additional recipes for the various ingredients required in the main recipes. For any one who enjoys the "Modern Southwest" style of cooking this book is a must.

This is a delightful book filled with delicious recipes from the Inn at 410 B&B in Arizona. The dishes use easily found ingredients and most are easy to make. It is printed in black & white with a few illustrations.

The book starts with baking tips including tips on lowering fat. Recipes include beverages, fruits, breakfasts, muffins, breads, spreads, scones, cookies & desserts. Sample menus are also given.

My favorite recipes are the blintz soufflé with blueberry sauce & Parmesan herb muffins. I also enjoyed the oatmeal pancakes, hash brown pie, tropical scones, raspberry crème anglaise & cinnamon kiss cookies.

I was hunting for a recipe of Indian Frybread because we'd eaten it up at the Makah Nation's summer celebration & wanted some at home. I found Native American Cooking: Foods of the Southwest Indian Nations & gave my Southwest-raised Webmaster a palatable surprise.

I also tried Pozole because hominy has such a primal aroma & flavor - incredible & so simple! We do not, of course, eat anywhere near as elegantly as the photos which present Cornsicles, Arrowheads of Blue Cornmeal Gnocchi or Lamb Stuffed Chiles or Cactus Pad Salad with Fiery Jalapeno Dressing. However, Hohoise Ice or Prickly Pear Ice refresh us up here in our plain bowls just as well!

The Adobe Bread was heavenly, the Dandelion Salad with Mustard Greens Vinaigrette was energizing & the Picuris Indian Bread Pudding with Apricot Sauce - dreamy! What I liked the most was bringing home the sights, smells, tastes & textures of a sunburned country & its people - both in the ingredients I hunted up & Lois Ellen Frank's book.

For a taste of the American Southwest & a glimpse into what has sustained healthy & contented generations, I heartily recommend this one - the recipes work & can easily be adapted to wherever you happen to have settled.

R.B. Cunninghame Graham's books are the sort of non-fiction that can almost be passed off as fiction. Desolate but fascinating wastelands, journeys over the silent terrain of the Americas, encounters with the bare edges of existence -- all make his works so engaging that I can't think of any writers to compare with him except his friends Joseph Conrad and W.H. Hudson.

Culled from his thirty or more books, Graham's "North American Sketches" were written between 1880 and 1925. They form the companion volume to his stunning South American and Scottish sketches also edited by John Walker. Here, we travel with the eccentric Scottish gaucho and radical MP for Menteith to the Mexican frontier and the Texas borderlands.

It is a savage world oscillating between barbarity and loneliness Graham describes for us. Time is punctuated with bloodshed, pointless cruelty, man's inhumanity to man, but also with hope and awe of this still wild land. "A Hegira," perhaps the most powerful sketch, depicts Graham's repeated encounters with six fugitive Mexican Apaches escaping from "the law" as he and his wife head north from Mexico City to their San Antonio ranch. "Silent and stoical the warriors sat," he describes them in the first encounter, before their flight, "not speaking once in a whole day, communicating but by signs; naked except the breech-clout; their eyes apparently opaque, and looking at you without sight, but seeing everything." These figures from two worlds meet up again. "Days followed days as in a ship at sea; the waggons rolling on across the plains" as Graham's party continually spies traces of the Apaches fleeing to their homes in the north, pursued by Mexican Indian hunters who, over a week, track down and kill them all. Nothing during his journey inspires in him so much fascination as those "stoical," silent "indios bravos": "I wondered what they thought, how they looked upon the world."

There is in these sketches a profound sense of disenchantment with civilization as practised, with "progress" as conceived. The American and Mexican public, he writes, doubtless believe in the problematical "Uncle Sam's Justice [sic]," the "poetical justice" of slaughtering Indians. Nevertheless, Graham does not completely scorn "civilization"; far from it. "We might have taught [the Indians] something, they might have taught us much, but soon they will all be forgotten, and the lying telegrams will speak of 'glorious victories by our troops.' " Some sketches, in fact, exhibit Graham's great admiration for the Anglo and Mexican societies he in other places condemns. "A Chihuahueño" is a wonderful portrait of Miguel Sáenz, a mestizo from Chihuahua. Full of Sáenz's witty proverbs, the sketch shows Graham's fascination with folk sayings. "Trust not a mule nor a wench", Sáenz quips; and "Among soldiers and prostitutes all compliments stand excused."

Graham's portraits of Mexico and Texas are every bit as fascinating as his awesome South American Sketches. If you like W.H. Hudson and Joseph Conrad, you'll love R.B. Cunninghame Graham.

This is a great book, highly recommended. Hancock and McNamee capture the essence of the strange, mirage-like Southwest, full of ghosts and forgotten dreams.