This comprehensive activity book for children offers more than 50 pages of action-packed fun highlighting the contributions made by Native American, Hispanic, and Anglo peoples to the multi-cultural environment. Projects are presented in a variety of formats such as word searches, puzzles, matching objects, picture construction, and mystery puzzles.
An activity book for children highlighting the contributions of Native American, Hispanic and Anglo peoples to our multi-cultural environment. There are nine sections on The Land, Desert Wonders, Natural Things, Pioneers, Hispanic Heritage, Native Crafts, Kachina Art, Sand Painting, and Mud, Clay and Stone. Projects are presented in a variety of formats such as word searches, puzzles, matching objects, picture construction and more.
If the Southwest is known for its distinctive regional culture, it is not only the indigenous influences that make it so. As Anglo Americans moved into the territories of the greater Southwest, they brought with them a desire to reestablish the highest culture of their former homes: opera, painting, sculpture, architecture, and literature. But their inherited culture was altered, challenged, and reshaped by Native American and Hispanic peoples, and a new, vibrant cultural life resulted. From Houston to Los Angeles, from Tulsa to Tucson, Keith L. Bryant traces the development of "high culture" in the Southwest. Humans create culture, but in the Southwest, Bryant argues, the land itself has also influenced that creation. "Incredible light, natural grandeur, . . . and a geography at once beautiful and yet brutal molded societies that sprang from unique cultural sources." The peoples of the American Southwest share a regional consciousness--an experience of place--that has helped to create a unified, but not homogenized, Southwestern culture. Bryant also examines a paradox of Southwestern cultural life. Southwesterners take pride in their cultural distinctiveness, yet they struggled to win recognition for their achievements in "high culture." A dynamic tension between those seeking to re-create a Western European culture and those desiring one based on regional themes and resources continues to stimulate creativity. Decade by decade and city by city, Bryant charts the growth of cultural institutions and patronage as he describes the contributions of artists and performers and of the elites who support them. Bryant focuses on the significant role women played as leaders in the formation of cultural institutions and as writers, artists, and musicians. The text is enhanced by more than fifty photographs depicting the interplay between the people and the land and the culture that has resulted.
First Published in 1977, The Great American Desert presents a comprehensive overview of the life, history, and landscape of the American Southwest. The Great American desert encompasses the finest land, the biggest Canyon, the highest mountains, the driest deserts, the hottest valley, the oldest towns and the richest mines in the country. Its history is ancient and varied- the Aztec and Mayan civilizations, the Pueblo life, the Spanish and their influence, the Indians and the very type of Southwesterners who have taken up residence during the past century. Jon Manchip White, a Welshman, is one of the region's most recent residents. He has lived there for seven years, look stranger and grown to appreciate it with loving familiarity. He has seen beyond the subtle malignancies of civilization-the billboards, fast food places, tourist traps and the average American’s curious horror of the big outdoors. Indeed, he finds in this finely integrated account of the history and topography of a huge area of land signs that at times nature is winning the fight against man. This book ranges far beyond scenic wonders. The author is equally concerned with men who moved across this spectacular landscape, and who inhabit it now; men famous for a strange diversity of achievement-Coronado and D. H. Lawrence, Geronimo and Billy the Kid, as well as the migrants and desert dwellers of today. This fascinating book is a must read for anyone interested in America’s Southwest.
For his brilliant reportage ranging from the forested recesses of the Amazon to the manicured lawns of Westchester County, New York, Alex Shoumatoff has won acclaim as one of our most perceptive guides to the oddest corners of the earth. Now, with this book, he takes us on a kaleidoscopic journey into the most complex and myth-laden region of the American landscape and imagination. In this amazing narrative, Shoumatoff records his quest to capture the vast multiplicity of the American Southwest. Beginning with his first trip after college across the desert in a station wagon, some twenty-five years ago, he surveys the boundless variety of people and experiences constituting the place--the idea--that has become America's symbol and last redoubt of the "Other. From the Biosphere to the Mormons, from the deadly world of narcotraffickers to the secret lives of the covertly Jewish conversos, Shoumatoff explores the many alternative states of being who have staked their claim in the Southwest, making it a haven for every brand of refugee, fugitive, and utopian. And as he ventures across time and space, blending many genres--history, anthropology, natural science, to name only a few--he brings us a wealth of information on chile addiction, the diffusion of horses, the formation of the deserts and mountain ranges, the struggles of the Navajo to preserve their culture, and countless other aspects of this place we think we know. Full of profound sympathy and unique insights, Legends of the American Desert is a superbly rich epic of fact and reflection destined to take its place among such classics of regional portraiture as Ian Frazier's Great Plains. Alex Shoumatoff has created an exuberant celebration of a singularly American reality.
With its soaring azure sky and stark landscapes, the American Southwest is one of the most hauntingly beautiful regions on earth. Yet staggering population growth, combined with the intensifying effects of climate change, is driving the oasis-based society close to the brink of a Dust-Bowl-scale catastrophe. In A Great Aridness, William deBuys paints a compelling picture of what the Southwest might look like when the heat turns up and the water runs out. This semi-arid land, vulnerable to water shortages, rising temperatures, wildfires, and a host of other environmental challenges, is poised to bear the heaviest consequences of global environmental change in the United States. Examining interrelated factors such as vanishing wildlife, forest die backs, and the over-allocation of the already stressed Colorado River--upon which nearly 30 million people depend--the author narrates the landscape's history--and future. He tells the inspiring stories of the climatologists and others who are helping untangle the complex, interlocking causes and effects of global warming. And while the fate of this region may seem at first blush to be of merely local interest, what happens in the Southwest, deBuys suggests, will provide a glimpse of what other mid-latitude arid lands worldwide--the Mediterranean Basin, southern Africa, and the Middle East--will experience in the coming years. Written with an elegance that recalls the prose of John McPhee and Wallace Stegner, A Great Aridness offers an unflinching look at the dramatic effects of climate change occurring right now in our own backyard.
A guidebook to the Southwest, with sections on its Indians, birds, reptiles, insects, mammals, plants, and geology. Includes suggested tours, and a section on "Places to see and things to visit" gives, along with descriptive information, notes on accommodations and routes.
One of America's leading travel writers takes you on a grand tour of the Southwest from Mesa Verde to the Canyonlands and the Grand Canyon. From national parks to the top restaurants in Santa Fe, this guide to the very bests of Southwestern Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico includes big cities like Las Vegas and Phoenix, as well as legendary Native American ruins. Organized with easy-to-follow daily itineraries, each trip is ideal for travelers of all ages.Veteran travel writer Richard Harris uses here the self-guided itinerary format that he co-ceveloped with Rick Steves and Roger Rapport in the '80s...employing an updated approach." - Chicago Tribune
