Southwest Books of the Year
Southwest Books of the Year 2001 - Best Reading
Understanding the Arizona Constitution
by Toni McClory (University of Arizona Press)
Often bewildered in an election year with a plethora of propositions or befuddled when the legislature is called into a special session? I am compelled to recommend this useful primer to all Arizonans. I don't know another book that does a better job of explaining Arizona government. There's no hiding this is a textbook. However, McClory (a political science teacher, lawyer and former assistant attorney general from 1976-1991) makes the learning engaging. She includes interesting, humorous, historical sidelights and enhances the text with charts, online resources and a glossary.
-Deborah Bock
Also chosen by Lesley Bailey, Bruce Dinges and W. David Laird
The Southwest Inside Out: An Illustrated Guide to the Land and Its History
by Thomas Wiewandt and Maureen Wilks (Wild Horizons Publishing)
Commonly large format books provide one with a profusion of beautiful graphic elements, generally photographs, and very little in the way of engaging text or content. This one is a welcome exception to this commonality. Striking, often outstanding, photographs the book does have, and these are numerous. But they are gild on the uniquely blocked and well written text inserted between them and a series of cogent maps. The entire format seems to say "imagine what you are interested in or want to know, and it shall be provided. In a gesture to a more conventional construction, the final chapters are devoted to a comprehensive annotated list of southwestern parks, monuments and other sites of interest and a list of what the authors term good books and web sites. For anyone seeking an introduction to the real Southwest, this is probably one of the best books that has been published in many years.
-Norman Whaley
Also chosen by Bailey and Bock
Sunk Without A Sound: The Tragic Colorado River Honeymoon of Glen and Bessie Hyde
by Brad Dimock (Fretwater Press)
In the fall of 1928, young newlyweds Glen and Bessie Hyde launched their homemade, flat-bottomed sweep scow on the Green River. They were intent on running through the Grand Canyon. This would make Bessie the first woman ever to accomplish the feat. Two months later the scow was found becalmed below 232 Mile Rapid, fully loaded with its gear and remaining provisions. No trace of the Hydes was ever found despite a rigorous and thorough search. Seven decades later, boatman Dimock pursued every clue to its end. He even copied the Hyde boat and run with his own bride. This is an outstanding recreation of a truly mysterious disappearance.
-W. David Laird
Also chosen by Bock and Dinges
American Character: The Curious Life of Charles Fletcher Lummis and the Rediscovery of the Southwest
by Mark Thompson (Arcade Publishing)
No matter that we might quibble with "rediscovery" in the subtitle, this biography of the enigmatic, controversial Lummis makes use of the extensive writings, both published and unpublished, that he left upon his death. Thompson is no hagiographer and shows us an unvarnished Lummis: philanderer, demanding parent, domineering spouse, probable-hypchondriac - in other words with plenty of warts to balance his accomplishments as editor, writer, defender of the Indian and friend to the movers and shakers of the end of the 19th century and the beginnng of the 20th.
-W. David Laird
Also chosen by Bock
Edward Abbey: A Life
by James M. Cahalan (University of Arizona Press)
Cahalan hits a bases-loaded home run with this first full-blown biography of one of the late 20th-century Southwest's most important and puzzling literary figures. Abbey's books: Desert Solitaire, The Monkey Wrench Gang and The Fool's Progress defined the modern environmental movement. Based on exhaustive interviews with family and friends, together with a critical reading of Abbey's personal papers and numerous publications, Cahalan masterfully leads readers through a maze of contradictions and deceptions many of them concocted by Abbey himself. Thanks to Cahalan we now have a fair measure of the shy genius and the larger-than-life public persona that attracted a cult following.
-Bruce Dinges
Also chosen by Laird
Goats: A Novel
by Mark Jude Poirier (Hyperion)
Crisp writing and off-beat satire propel this inspired coming-of-age novel set mostly in Tucson. A Holden Caulfield for the new millenium, 14-year-old Ellis Whitman maintains a steady high while babysitting his divorced mother and relying for guidance on Goat Man, a middle-aged stoner who lives in the family's pool house, raises goats and harvests a greenhouse full of righteous weed. Things become complicated when Ellis leaves for an eastern prep school. He makes new friends, gets to know his father and adapts to a new set of rules. A school break culminates in a grueling desert trek with Goat Man that forces Ellis to reassess his values and bonds of friendship. Poirier is a literary voice to be reckoned with.
-Bruce Dinges
Also chosen by Laird
Pie Town Woman: The Hard Life and Good Times of a New Mexico Homesteader
by Joan Myers (University of New Mexico Press)
Intrigued by a brief visit to the tiny west-central New Mexico community, the Depression-era photographs of Russell Lee and a chance letter from the woman in many of Lee's photographs, Myers established contact with Doris Caudill, who, with her husband Faro, homesteaded the hardscrabble high country in the 1930s. The result is a remarkable, often moving account that combines one woman's nostalgic recollections of uncommonly hard times, an insightful analysis of Lee's photographic legacy and family snapshots. Added are Myers own striking photographs of modern-day Pie Town and her perspective on history, memory and the photographer's art.
-Bruce Dinges
Also chosen by Laird
Tall Woman: The Life Story of Rose Mitchell, a Navajo Woman c. 1874-1977
by Rose Mitchell, edited by Charlotte J. Frisbie (University of New Mexico Press)
An unforgettable story of a strong but gentle woman who in her 102 years lived through a period of profound change for her people. Speaking in Navajo, she told her story over a span of 14 years to an anthropologist. It was later translated into English. Tall Woman can be read and enjoyed by anyone with an appreciation for history and character.
-Lesley Bailey
Also chosen by Laird
Grand Ambition
by Lisa Michaels (W.W. Norton)
The daring 1928 river-running venture and disappearance in the Grand Canyon of newlyweds Glen and Bessie Hyde has been the subject of speculation and legend with scant factual material to ascertain what really happened. Michaels' account is a fictionalized version. Poignantly she recounts the lives and motivations of the Hydes, as well as Glen's father who conducts a desperate search for them attracting nation-wide attention. Michaels' vivid descriptions of the canyon and the river running put you on the river.
-Deborah Bock
Also chosen by Dinges
A Place to Stand: The Making of a Poet
by Jimmy Santiago Baca (Grove Press)
A lucidly written memoir by an acclaimed poet who experienced abandonment, poverty and prejudice growing up in northern New Mexico. Baca's life reached a low point when he was sentenced, at 21, to five years in the Arizona State penitentiary at Florence. His experiences challenge the morality and effectiveness of the prison system. But while in prison he taught himself to read and write, gained insight into his life and the ability to change its direction.
-Lesley Bailey
Also chosen by Dinges
Women's Tales From the New Mexico WPA: La Diabla a Pie
edited by Tey Diana Rebolledo and Maria Teresa Marquez (Arte Publico Press)
You'll be transported into another era when you delve into these previously unpublished English transcriptions of interviews originally gathered, largely from New Mexico's Spanish/Hispanic population, for the Depression-era WPA Federal Writers' Project. Folklore, social and religious customs as well as community roles and responsibilities are vividly recounted. Historical background and insight into cultural biases evident in the 1930s are explored in the introduction.
-Deborah Bock
Also chosen by Bailey