I was born in Santa Fe to families with long histories in the southern region of the state. It was my grandfather, Louis Whitlock, a state senator, who headed the legislation that landed Carlsbad this monument of folly.
My childhood was shaped by the reality and beauty of the state. The books I’ve chosen are dear to me because they reflect familial lore. It is a state I love, a state I hope every American visits at least once. Yet much of its reality is obscured by pottery and rugs, Lucchese boots and impressive architecture. These books, I hope, offer a counterbalance, so that anybody touring the state can appreciate its complex culture and history.
By now, McCarthy is well known for his books on the Southwest. Cities of the Plain is painfully overlooked.
I read it in college as a precocious creative writing major and fell in love because the towns mentioned (Belén, where my grandmother was born, as example) were familiar to me and yet I had no idea these nowhere places of my youth were known to anybody else in the world, to say nothing about their value to any artistic form.
Unlike All the Pretty Horses, Cities of the Plain has zero romanticism to it: it’s a contemporary, hard-driven tale of ranching in the badlands of New Mexico. McCarthy focuses on the pumpjacks and the stench of creosote that encapsulate the southern part of the state.
There’s also a gruesomely funny passage about an Oldsmobile and dozens of jackrabbits.
First published in 1994. Environmental issues present a daunting challenge to the international system. The destruction of the tropical rainforest, the Chernobyl explosion and the ozone layer 'hole' all underline the transnational nature of environmental threats and the need for states to act together in order to tackle them. How have such environmental issues entered political agendas in different parts of the world and how has that affected national positions? Can governments ever reconcile their own national interests with the international cooperation needed to deal with transboundary issues such as climate change?
This book traces the history of international environmental…
I first read Baca at a time when, for whatever reason, I hated memoirs. Me-me-oirs, a fiction professor once called them. A Place to Stand changed my mind.
At age twenty-one, Baca was an illiterate prison inmate. He emerged from lockup as a poet—and a damned good one. Born in Santa Fe, Jimmy Santiago Baca’s memoir is, to my mind, a must-read for anybody who intends to visit The City Different: before hitting the slopes, the art galleries, and jewelry stores; before donning your best Pendleton sweater, read A Place to Stand. It’s a compelling and personal look at how life in Santa Fe is for most.
Jimmy Santiago Baca's harrowing, brilliant memoir of his life before, during, and immediately after the years he spent in a maximum-security prison garnered tremendous critical acclaim and went on to win the prestigious 2001 International Prize. Long considered one of the best poets in America today, Baca was illiterate at the age of twenty-one and facing five to ten years behind bars for selling drugs. A Place to Stand is the remarkable tale of how he emerged after his years in the penitentiary -- much of it spent in isolation -- with the ability to read and a passion for…
Published last year, Whiskey Tender became a finalist for the National Book Award in Nonfiction—and for good reason.
Taffa manages to weave her child and teen years as a citizen of the Fort Yuma Indian Reservation with the historical trauma that still haunts the Desert Southwest. I’m not sure how many Americans are aware that, while perhaps having undergone a facelift, assimilation via boarding schools and governmental programs continue.
Further, the western part of New Mexico is often misunderstood or overlooked, and anybody wanting to tour New Mexico should, at the very least, understand the enormous cultural importance of the region.
The writing is bold and powerful, often poetic. I would say I’m jealous, given this is Taffa’s first book. But the accolades are well deserved.
A Best Book of the Year: Washington Post, Esquire, Time, The Atlantic, NPR, and Publishers Weekly
An Oprah Daily "Best New Book" and "Riveting Nonfiction and Memoir You Need to Read" * A New York Times "New Book to Read" * A Zibby Mag "Most Anticipated Book" * A San Francisco Chronicle "New Book to Cozy Up With" * The Millions "Most Anticipated" *An Amazon Editors "Best Book of the Month" * A Parade "Best New Work By Indigenous Writers" *…
Another jealous-worthy book, this collection of essays explores the fallout from atomic testing.
It goes beyond that.
My favorite essay in the collection is “Living Room.” The piece centers around a television gifted to the writer after the death of a high school classmate he doesn’t remember. From there, it weaves together the philosophical notion of memory with the more tangible, hard-luck details of Werther’s candies, peach sherbert, a red leather sofa.
The title of the book is spot-on, and any fan of Denis Johnson’s prose will love this collection.
Early on July 16, 1945, Joshua Wheeler's great grandfather awoke to a flash, and then a long rumble: the world's first atomic blast filled the horizon north of his ranch in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Out on the range, the cattle had been bleached white by the fallout.
Acid West, Wheeler's stunning debut collection of essays, is full of these mutated cows: vestiges of the Old West that have been transformed, suddenly and irrevocably, by innovation. Traversing the New Mexico landscape his family has called home for seven generations, Wheeler excavates and reexamines these oddities, assembling a cabinet of narrative curiosities:…
In the United States, New Mexico is a habitual contender for both poorest and most violent/dangerous.
Stan Hoig’s comprehensive examination of the conquistador expeditions into the region leads one to believe the place never had a chance. Men like Nuno Beltrán de Guzmán and Coronado worked under the guise of spreading the word of God to the New World.
The reality is much different: the kingdom of Castile had bankrupted itself with their defeat of the Moors on the Iberian Peninsula. What Spain really needed was gold, and the kingdom was willing to do anything to stay solvent. From its inception, what we now know as New Mexico had little time for justice: justice takes time.
For anybody planning a visit to New Mexico—and its natural beauty is, to my mind, second-to-none—Came Men on Horses provides a pivotal, historical context to its continued milieu.
Guided by myths of golden cities and worldly rewards, policy makers, conquistador leaders, and expeditionary aspirants alike came to the new world in the sixteenth century and left it a changed land. Came Men on Horses follows two conquistadors--Francisco Vazquez de Coronado and Don Juan de Onate--on their journey across the southwest.
Driven by their search for gold and silver, both Coronado and Onate committed atrocious acts of violence against the Native Americans, and fell out of favor with the Spanish monarchy. Examining the legacy of these two conquistadors Hoig attempts to balance their brutal acts and selfish motivations with…
High Desert Blood consists of two, interwoven threads: the first looks at the Penitentiary of New Mexico from its construction in the 1950s, when the facility was deemed the most modern and progressive on the planet, through its slow decay and, finally, how it became the setting of the country’s most violent prison riot.
The second thread is more intimate, focusing on a handful of inmates—some victims, some not—and, in particular, the mysterious disappearances of two brothers incarcerated during the riot. It offers a gripping true crime journey through the heart of a system that failed its inmates, its staff, and the society it was meant to protect.
