Arizona

John Alcock is a behavioral ecologist and professor at Arizona State University. He writes in a very approachable style (similar to more popular and famous biologists like Stephen Jay Gould and E.O. Wilson) that splendidly reveals his passion and appreciation of desert life as a naturalist to the general public. This 1985 title, Sonoran Desert Spring, contains numerous photographs (some in color) of the Sonoran desert during springtime.

Originally produced and published for the students of the Rock Point Community School on the Navajo Reservation in northern Arizona, this book became prominent as Volume 11 in the Sun Tracks, a series of contemporary Native American literary works. Between Sacred Mountains portrays Navajo world view based upon the land and how it has sustained the lifeways of the Navajo people. Text and stories are written and told by Navajo traditional knowledge holders, healers, educators, artists, and numerous specialists in the field of Navajo Studies.

Together, the Goodwin and Guenther Collections in the Arizona State Museum form the most significant collection of Apache cultural materials dating from the mid-1800s to 1985. In the early 1930s, Grenville Goodwin came to Arizona to attend prep school, but instead was drawn to the Apaches and spent his time studying their way of life. He gathered items from them, and earned the trust of knowledgeable elders who recreated things no longer made – all which he thoroughly documented, detailing their construction, meaning, and use.

Featuring Ann Nolan Clark’s poetic prose and softly-colored illustrations by renowned Chiricahua artist Allan Houser in The Desert People, this book teaches us about the yearly cycle of Tohono O’odom traditional life and culture through the experiences of a young boy being taught by his father. Clark was an award-winning writer and educator whose books about American Indian life, culture, and language helped educate a generation of American Indian students during the New Deal years.

“It just seemed like a natural and harmless thing to do at the time” states author Bob Jones regarding the formation of the Tucson Gem and Mineral Society in 1946. The ‘rockhounds’ who formed the group could not have anticipated that their organization would go on to create the world’s largest and most renowned gem and mineral show, frequented by scientists and scholars, dealers and vendors, artists and jewelers, and students and families alike.

This book showcases evocative pictures of Southwestern churches taken by Douglas Kent Hall, a well-known documentary photographer. Originally from New York, Hall moved to the small village of Alcalde in northern New Mexico. He spent time travelling throughout the Southwest and along the Mexico-U.S. border in the 1980s gathering material for two photographic books.

“Writers of mystery stories often have to cast about for the key elements of an intriguing story […] I did not go looking for these critical ingredients of the story of the Tucson Meteorite. They came to me.” states Richard R. Willey in his forward to this short but thorough book. This book explores every aspect of the Meteorites – from their original descent to Earth, their mineral composition, to their use as anvils by American Indians and frontiersmen alike, to their name as a specimen, and the history of how they came to be in the Smithsonian.

There has not been much scholarship published on the history of African Americans in the American West and this may be one of the reasons the average person may have misconceptions about that history. This is why titles such as Hoo-Doo Cowboys and Bronze Buckaroos are such a welcome addition to research collections.

Max Ernst was one of the most prolific and original artists of the 20th century. After marrying American artist Dorothea Tanning in 1946, the couple moved to Sedona, Arizona where they lived until 1953. It was in Sedona that Ernst completed his monumental masterpiece Capricorn. Originally constructed in cement from castings of milk bottles, automobile springs, and other cast offs, the free-standing sculpture was situated opposite the house Ernst built by hand on Brewer Road.

German artist Max Ernst was a pioneer of the Dada and Surrealist movement. After marrying American artist Dorothea Tanning in 1946, the couple moved to Sedona, Arizona, where they lived until 1953. Initially remote and unpopulated, an artists’ colony soon took root amongst the monumental red rocks.

An attractive, slipcased catalog for a collaborative exhibition of sculptor Isamu Noguchi, painter Genichiro Inokuma, and designer Issey Miyake at the Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art (MIMOCA), Japan, highlighting the mutual influence of the three friends and their hybrid Japanese and American cultures.

Beginning in late 1863, author J. Ross Browne accompanied Charles D. Poston on his tour of Arizona as the territory’s Superintendent of Indian Affairs. This book recounts their adventure, presenting a vivid, colorful description of the area and of the terrors which then attended border life in Arizona, where one-twentieth of the population had been swept away by the attacks of the Apaches in three years. Browne's travelogue also contains details on early mining in addition to observations of the lands and people he encountered.

In 1871, seventeen-year-old Fred Dellenbaugh, under the lead of Major John Wesley Powell, a Civil War hero and the first director of the Smithsonian’s Bureau of Ethnology, journeyed into the Grand Canyon and its subsidiary canyons and rivers with the intention of exploring, mapping, and recording descriptions of the uncharted territory. The men found themselves battling the great force of the Colorado River, with its fatal, quick rapids and mighty waterfalls. This is Dellenbaugh’s personal story, written thirty years after the great adventure.

Nothing says Southwestern style like a great pair of cowboy boots! This book from the Costume collection at the National Museum of American History Library gives information on the “anatomy” of a cowboy boot along with descriptions of the different materials used in their manufacture. The author tells a lively history of the bootmaking industry and features a number of well-known bootmakers. The artful photography of Jim Arndt showcases the wide variety and enduring appeal of American cowboy boots.

Richard J. Hinton (1830-1901), an Englishman, crossed the Atlantic in 1851 and took up residence in New York City. While there he learned the printer's trade and soon became a newspaper reporter. As a reporter he opposed the Fugitive Slave Law, became an anti-slavery advocate, and assisted in the organization of the Republican Party, which came into being in large part to oppose the expansion of slavery as embodied in the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

“For more than thirty years the author has been gathering information from old timers, Indians, Mexicans, cowboys, sheep-herders, historians, any and everybody who had a story to tell as to the origin and meaning of Arizona names” begins Will Croft Barnes' most well-known work, Arizona Place Names – the product of a lifetime of travel throughout Arizona as a result of his military, political, geographical, and ecological services to the U.S.

“Arizona is a land that is full of history as well as mystery and invites investigation. It has a fascination that every one feels who crosses its boarder. Paradoxical as it may seem, it is both the oldest and newest portion of our country – the oldest in ancient occupation and civilization and the newest in modern progress.” So states Joseph A. Munk in A Romantic Land, the first chapter, or sketch, in this, his first book about Arizona.

This 80 paged collector's edition stamp album collector's pays homage to many classic American comics, including but not limited to Dick Tracy, Popeye, Li'l Abner, Flash Gordon, and Krazy Kat.

This 1952 cookbook began in an Inupiaq village just 20 miles south of the Arctic Circle as part of an elementary school classroom discussion of locally available native foods for good health.  The teacher’s request for each student to “bring in a recipe or little story of how mother cooked the meat, fish, or other foods used”  resulted in this booklet. Recipes share instructions on preparing indigenous plants and wildlife, from stink weed to polar bear and whale.