west

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.

This book is a narrative of the author’s 1971-1972 survey of nesting raptors in the eastern Colorado prairie. Species observed included golden eagles, owls, hawks, and falcons. The majority of the book describes the behaviors of these birds in their natural habitats, but it also includes anecdotes involving a few native reptiles, small mammals, and other non-raptor bird species. The author presents an optimistic view of the future of raptor-human interaction with proper conservation methods. The book is beautifully illustrated with drawings by Robert Katona, a self-taught artist.

One of a series of travel guides written by Perry Mason author Erle Stanley Gardner, this book documents a fun-filled search for the “Lost Dutchman” and “Lost Nummel” mines in Arizona in 1965. The team utilized helicopters, jeeps, desert buggies, and mules in its search, which is captured in many photographs. The book also includes biographies of the search team members. It documents a bygone era of exploration and a form of adventure with wide appeal.

This 180-page book is written for older children. The book tracks the adventures of an Irish American family, the Cullens, who were caught up in a competition between two railroad companies vying for government funding in the 1860s. Union Pacific was laying track westward from Omaha, Nebraska, while Central Pacific was laying track eastward from Sacramento, California. This work of historical fiction for young readers includes authentic details from the period.

You may know the names of Jesse James, Billy the Kid, or Pat Garrett. But what about Buss Luckey, the Rufus Buck Gang, the Lighthorsemen, or Zeke Miller? Although whites dominate popular depictions of the lawless west, Black, Red and Deadly presents the sagas of African-American and American Indian outlaws and bona fide law enforcers in Indian Territory. Luckey was an African American convicted bandit who dynamited a train carrying $60,000 in gold bullion.

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.

A book that accompanied the 1946 exhibit "If You Want To Build A House" exhibit at The Museum of Modern Art. The book highlights mid-century modern architects such as Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe, Philip Johnson, and Richard Neutra as well as Prairie School architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The book describes the concepts of modern architecture from the prospective of a potential home builder.

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 1985 title, Sonoran Desert Spring, contains numerous photographs (some in color) of the Sonoran desert during springtime.

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.