In 1983, an anonymous caller warned Doc Smith that “his river would turn red.” Sure enough, the next day, the rancher and veterinarian watched toxic mining metals surge through the Arkansas River as it crossed his property. This wasn’t the first time: His grandfather had fought the effects of mining on his ranchlands and livestock […]
Books
Posted inJuly 25, 2005: The Many Faces of Richard Pombo
Head games in the hot, hot desert
No matter how well-mapped the world seems to be, explorers remain intrepid. In The Way Out, Colorado writer Craig Childs writes about how he and his traveling companion, Dirk Vaughan, found their way through a desert on the Navajo Indian Reservation in southern Utah. Both Childs and Vaughan seem to crave the harsh truths of […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2005: The Many Faces of Richard Pombo
Outgrowing the Earth: The Food Security Challenge in an Age of Falling Water Tables and Rising Temperatures
Outgrowing the Earth: The Food Security Challenge in an Age of Falling Water Tables and Rising Temperatures Lester R. Brown, 272 pages, hardcover $27.95, paperback $15.95: W.W. Norton, 2005. Lester Brown, the environmental world’s leading prophet of doom, brings us his latest nonfiction disaster thriller. As world populations boom, farmers reach deeper and deeper underground […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2005: The Many Faces of Richard Pombo
Pueblo Indian Agriculture
Pueblo Indian Agriculture James A. Vlasich, 384 pages, hardcover $34.95: University of New Mexico Press, 2005. James Vlasich explores the American Indian farms along New Mexico’s Rio Grande. The 19 pueblos there have endured — despite Spanish conquistadors, land and water disputes with Anglo settlers, and the vagaries of U.S. Indian policy. Now, the Body […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2005: The Many Faces of Richard Pombo
Complete History of New Mexico
Complete History of New Mexico Kevin McIlvoy, 174 pages, paperback $15: Graywolf Press, 2004. This collection of short stories from a Las Cruces-based writer is published by the independent Graywolf Press. Kevin McIlvoy’s stories are written from a variety of perspectives — from 11-year-old Chum telling the history of the state as he sees it, […]
Posted inJune 27, 2005: Reflections on a Divided Land
Wyoming’s unsung wilderness heroes
Wyoming’s wilderness culture has its heroes, but unlike the cowboys who get so much play in the state, they are largely unknown. In Ahead of Their Time, a new book covering four decades of the Wyoming wilderness movement, editors Broughton Coburn and Leila Bruno try to remedy that by asking writers to choose a wilderness […]
Posted inJune 27, 2005: Reflections on a Divided Land
A tasty history of the Southwest
If you think fusion food was something California chefs cooked up in the 1980s, you’re off by a couple of centuries. Gardens of New Spain opens in 1492, the year Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand kicked the Moors out of Spain. The Moors fled, but they had already left an indelible mark on Iberian cuisine: […]
Posted inJune 27, 2005: Reflections on a Divided Land
Peering into the life of the prairie
In Prairie: A Natural History, Candace Savage celebrates the beauty and diversity of the great grasslands of North America, a land she describes as “flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone.” The lavishly illustrated book features colorful photographs by James R. Page and charming pen-and-ink drawings by Joan A. Williams. 300 pages, hardcover, […]
Posted inJune 27, 2005: Reflections on a Divided Land
The more the West changes, the more it stays the same
Bernard DeVoto, a man with few sacred cows, wrote a monthly column on the West for Harper’s magazine from 1946 until 1955. From “The Easy Chair,” he expounded on everything from how cattlemen destroyed Western watersheds to why the West is “systematically looted and has always been bankrupt.” Now, history professor Edward K. Muller has […]
Posted inJune 27, 2005: Reflections on a Divided Land
Sometimes it’s hard to tell who the turkeys are
So you think wildlife biology is a science? Sure it is, if estimating wild turkey populations by counting the birds that run across the road in front of your truck is “science.” In Stalking the Big Bird, an often-amusing tale of his 27 years with the Arizona Game and Fish Department, biologist Harley Shaw reveals […]
Posted inJune 13, 2005: Owning a Piece of Paradise
In the nation’s most dangerous park, the desert’s heat still beats
In Organ Pipe: Life on the Edge, author Carol Ann Bassett heeds the advice of her mentor, Ed Abbey: “Learning about the desert takes time,” she writes. “Abbey once wrote the best way to do so was to ‘Pick out a good spot and just sit there, not moving, for about a year — and […]
Posted inJune 13, 2005: Owning a Piece of Paradise
William Henry Jackson’s ‘The Pioneer Photographer’
William Henry Jackson’s ‘The Pioneer Photographer’ Bob Blair, 248 pages, clothbound: $39.95. Museum of New Mexico Press, 2005. William Henry Jackson was the official photographer for Ferdinand V. Hayden’s survey of the Western territory from 1870-1878. Now, Bob Blair has compiled photos, map sketches, paintings and notes into a fun coffee-table book. Chapters range from […]
Posted inJune 13, 2005: Owning a Piece of Paradise
Desire
Desire Lindsay Ahl, 231 pages, paperback: $14. Coffeehouse Press, 2004. If you’ve ever crept around the alley south of Albuquerque’s Central Avenue, you’ll be immediately drawn into this new novel by Santa Fe writer Lindsay Ahl. And even if you’ve never been to the Duke City, there’s good writing and fun action to draw you […]
Posted inJune 13, 2005: Owning a Piece of Paradise
Restoring a Presence: American Indians and Yellowstone National Park
Restoring a Presence: American Indians and Yellowstone National Park Peter Nabokov and Lawrence Loendorf, 400 pages, hardcover: $39.95. University of Oklahoma Press, 2004. There’s plenty of talk about keeping bison and wolves in the nation’s flagship national park, but few people realize that American Indians were evicted from the area to make way for tourists, […]
Posted inJune 13, 2005: Owning a Piece of Paradise
River tales: The Rio Grande from the headwaters to the sea
Trying to wrestle the Rio Grande into one book is a foolhardy undertaking, not only because of the river’s complexity, but because so many writers have attempted the feat before. But this new collection from Jan Reid is a tribute to the river rivaled only by Paul Horgan’s 1954 masterpiece, Great River. Rio Grande is […]
Posted inMay 30, 2005: Write-off on the Range
Bringing back the wolf = bringing back the habitat
The wolf today inspires polarized emotions. It is viewed by some as a slavering, rapacious killing machine; by others, as the noble symbol of a lost wilderness. In the fascinating Decade of the Wolf: Returning the Wild to Yellowstone, biologist Douglas Smith and nature writer Gary Ferguson seek to sort myth from reality. They describe […]
Posted inMay 30, 2005: Write-off on the Range
A view of the West from on high
What does a newpaperman-turned-professor who spends the better part of 168 pages reminiscing about life in the spliff-puffing ski town of Crested Butte have to say that’s relevant to anywhere else in the West? Well, it turns out, a lot. If you ever wonder whether the West will create that mythic society to match its […]
Posted inMay 30, 2005: Write-off on the Range
The Singing Life of Birds
The Singing Life of Birds Donald Kroodsma, 482 pages, hardcover: $28.00. Houghton Mifflin, 2005. Have you ever wished you could distinguish the song of a wood thrush from that of a hermit thrush? Kroodsman’s new book combines his personal observations of birds with scientific descriptions of how they develop their songs. Accompanying diagrams show the […]
Posted inMay 30, 2005: Write-off on the Range
Little Things in a Big Country: An Artist and Her Dog on the Rocky Mountain Front
Little Things in a Big Country: An Artist and Her Dog on the Rocky Mountain Front Hannah Hinchman, 176 pages, hardcover: $25.95. W.W. Norton & Company, 2004. This hand-lettered, hand-illustrated book tells of Hinchman’s travels with her dog in western Montana. Her charming yet refreshingly unsentiminetal descriptions, sketches, and paintings illustrate the changing seasons, her […]
Posted inMay 30, 2005: Write-off on the Range
Wild Echoes: Encounters With the Most Endangered Animals in North America
Wild Echoes: Encounters With the Most Endangered Animals in North America Charles Bergman, 325 pages, softcover: $21.95. University of Illinois Press, 2003. Biologists know that human activities are causing thousands of species to go extinct. According to Bergman, our attitudes contribute to extinction just as much as our automobiles do. By imagining animals as separate […]