southwest

After serving with the Texas Rangers in his late teens and early 20s, then studying for a career in medicine (in Kentucky), and then for the ministry (at Princeton), Charles Webber finally settled into journalism, writing for several literary reviews. Enticed by tales of gold and quicksilver in the country north of the Gila River in Arizona, Webber organized an expedition to the region, writing this and other books to promote it.

Grazing. Fire. Water. All issues important out West, all issues pertinent to rangeland ecology and management, and all addressed in this comprehensive book. For scientists who study natural processes, such as the research staff at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (where this book resides), there is much to be learned from this text. Deer, insects, and other herbivores graze, and grazing has impacts on plant physiology and morphology, energy flow through ecosystems, and other ecosystem effects. Fire and water also profoundly shape both managed and natural systems.

This book is a collection of chapters, each written by experts in their ecological discipline. It covers the role of both insects and vertebrate animals (those with a backbone) in desert ecosystems, how nutrients move through the system (‘nutrient cycling’ is a hot topic for those who study ecosystems), and how plants adapt to the soils and rainfall in deserts. An important text for anyone who studies these phenomenon in deserts and elsewhere.

This slim book about native plants found in the Phoenix regional area, circa 1933, was written at a time when the population of the city was just under 50,000 people. It’s a self published book with the author providing both text and simple pen and ink illustrations of the plants throughout the book, including the book’s cover.

Led by Captain Clarence E. Dutton, the U.S. Geological Survey’s exploration of the Grand Canyon in the early 1880s resulted in a scientific text and this stunning over-sized folio atlas, considered the greatest book by any of the government surveys of the American West. The expedition included artist/archaeologist William Henry Holmes and the artist Thomas Moran. Three double-page, color-tinted lithographed plates by Holmes, when set together, form the magnificent “Panorama from Point Sublime.” In the bottom left corner Dutton is depicted leaning over Holmes as he sketches the view.

For just twenty five cents in 1963, you could buy this little book, documenting plants in Window Rock, Arizona, at the Navajo Tribal Museum. The plants listed in this catalog were collected in the area. The actual dried plant specimens now reside at the Jepson Herbarium at  the University of California, Berkeley. Each plant entry is simple, listing the scientific name, common name, and a brief description of the landscape where the plant was found. In some cases, elevation is listed as well.

“Civilization Follows the Improved Highway.” That was and still is the motto of the enduring and always alluring travel magazine Arizona Highways.  It was first published in 1925 as an engineering newsletter by the Arizona Highway Department. By the 1930s, it had segued into a magazine documenting the road construction of the expanding highway system throughout Arizona. In the 1940s, the magazine excelled as one of the first color illustrated travel magazines at the forefront of color printing technology.

Third in a series of natural history publications presented by the Grand Canyon Natural History Association, this little book introduces several tree species to Canyon visitors and readers alike. The book talks about the park's “deer epidemic” which happened when ranchers got permission allowed kill mountain lions. This caused the deer population to dramatically increase and destroy the aspen trees on the Kaibab plateau. In response, officials introduced the practice of deer hunting and allowed some existence of mountain, hoping to curtail the problem.

“Civilization Follows the Improved Highway.” That was and still is the motto of the enduring and always alluring travel magazine Arizona Highways.  It was first published in 1925 as an engineering newsletter by the Arizona Highway Department. By the 1930s, it had segued into a magazine documenting the road construction of the expanding highway system throughout Arizona. In the 1940s, the magazine excelled as one of the first color illustrated travel magazines at the forefront of color printing technology.

Cacti are inextricably linked to our vision of the desert. They are native to the Americas with many species found in Arizona, including the state flower, the Saguaro. This book is written by a Cactaceae (cactus family) botanical specialist, Lyman Benson, and illustrated by Lucretia Breazeale Hamilton, a botanical illustrator well known for her drawings of southwest plants. There are many line drawings with color photographs of cacti. This second edition has information on botanical names and taxonomical classification on the species found in Arizona.

This beautifully illustrated and colorful book focuses on the work of the designers and architects who apprenticed with Frank Lloyd Wright at the Taliesin Fellowship in Scottsdale, Arizona from 1937-1950s. There are hundreds of photographs and drawings in this first edition book, many from the apprentices’ own archives and previously unpublished. The author interviewed and traced the careers of many former apprentices, including internationally known architects E.

As a former apprentice at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin Fellowship program, Curtis Besinger provides a lively account of daily life in this community of architects established by Wright in Wisconsin and Arizona. While an apprenticeship with the Fellowship was unlike standard architectural training, it did entail some architectural tasks, such as drafting, designing, and overseeing projects, including the actual building of Taliesin West.

Constructions: buildings in Arizona is the accompanying catalogue to the one and only exhibition of Alfred Newman Beadle V’s architectural work, mounted by Arizona State University in 1993. Interestingly, due to persistent demand, Gnosis, Ltd. has published a second edition, generously illustrated with 31 black-and-white photos and 25 drawings that includes a new foreword by ASU Professor Emeritus and architectural historian Bernard Michael Boyle. The Cooper Hewitt edition is the original catalogue.

Taliesin is a relatively rare edition self-published in Scottsdale and signed by the author, Olgivanna Lloyd Wright. In this book, Olgivanna Lloyd Wright, the third wife of Frank Lloyd Wright, tells beautifully illustrated accounts of The Fellowship, The Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, The Taliesin Associated Architects, and Taliesin West itself. There are many intimate color images of Wright’s Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona that was completed in 1937.

Book artist and engineer Joe D'Ambrosio wrote, printed, illustrated, signed, and bound just 125 editions of this book. The first twenty-five copies of the printing have a deluxe binding and additions such as extra hand-coloring, metallic inks, and feathers. This edition is one of the rare twenty-five. The text of the tale is letterpress printed in four colors on two different colors of confetti paper.

The first of six colorful pop-ups in Creatures of the desert world depicts early morning in Arizona’ s Sonoran Desert as bobcats and birds around a large saguaro cactus dramatically lift off the page when the book is opened. The subsequent pages follow the vibrant and alive desert environment throughout the day into a full moonlit night when the night hunters, including bats and kit foxes, begin their search for food.

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 1990 title, “Sonoran Desert Summer,” is marvelously illustrated with pen and ink drawings by Marilyn Hoff Stewart.

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.

This dog-eared 1964 (second printing) copy of “The Vertebrates of Arizona” has likely been used in the field by Smithsonian and other biologists over the years. Editor Charles H. Lowe was a respected herpetologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson.  Containing useful landscape photographs, maps, and data, the second half of this book is organized into annotated check-lists of fishes, amphibians, birds and mammals of Arizona. This makes it an essential resource for biologists and taxonomists studying the region.

This handsome large-format book from 1971, “Arizona,” contains many page-filling photographs of stunning Arizona scenery taken by influential American landscape and nature photographer David Muench.  No doubt that some of the scenes in these photographs (many featured in “Arizona Highways” magazine) have changed or even disappeared in the decades since the book’s publication. Muench specializes in portraying Western landscapes and is still active today.

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.