Each book in this series concentrates on the things that make each state unique. State-specific topics covered include: geography and climate, "Famous Firsts," state symbols, history and poeple, state government, culture, food, folklore and legends, sports teams, businesses and products, attractions and landmarks.
In 1981, while working as New Mexico State Historian, Stanley M. Hordes began to hear stories of Hispanos who lit candles on Friday night and abstained from eating pork. Puzzling over the matter, Hordes realized that these practices might very well have been passed down through the centuries from early crypto-Jewish settlers in New Spain. After extensive research and hundreds of interviews, Hordes concluded that there was, in New Mexico and the Southwest, a Sephardic legacy derived from the converso community of Spanish Jews. In To the End of the Earth, Hordes explores the remarkable story of crypto-Jews and the tenuous preservation of Jewish rituals and traditions in Mexico and New Mexico over the past five hundred years. He follows the crypto-Jews from their Jewish origins in medieval Spain and Portugal to their efforts to escape persecution by migrating to the New World and settling in the far reaches of the northern Mexican frontier. Drawing on individual biographies (including those of colonial officials accused of secretly practicing Judaism), family histories, Inquisition records, letters, and other primary sources, Hordes provides a richly detailed account of the economic, social and religious lives of crypto-Jews during the colonial period and after the annexation of New Mexico by the United States in 1846. While the American government offered more religious freedom than had the Spanish colonial rulers, cultural assimilation into Anglo-American society weakened many elements of the crypto-Jewish tradition. Hordes concludes with a discussion of the reemergence of crypto-Jewish culture and the reclamation of Jewish ancestry within the Hispano community in the late twentieth century. He examines the publicity surrounding the rediscovery of the crypto-Jewish community and explores the challenges inherent in a study that attempts to reconstruct the history of a people who tried to leave no documentary record.
Many Americans dream about building their own home. With this book you can make those dreams a reality. As innovative and original as it was when first published in 1972, Ken Kern's The Owner-Built Home is an aspiring DIY homebuilder's bible. Finally, after years of demand, it is back in print for the next generation of owner-builders. The product of years of research and experimentation with innumerable design and construction techniques around the world, The Owner-Built Home is full of practical tips. It describes in refreshing, straight-forward language, everything involved in making a home. Fully illustrated with drawings, photographs, and plans, The Owner-Built Home is an indispensable tool for anyone planning to build a house. Readers interested in related titles from Ken Kern will also want to see: The Owner Builder's Guide to Stone Masonry (ISBN: 9781626545403), Owner Built Homestead (Emblem Editions) (ISBN: 9781626545441), The Owner Builder's Guide to Stone Masonry (ISBN: 9781626545403), Owner Built Homestead (Emblem Editions) (ISBN: 9781626545441).
Internationally renowned photographer Lucian Niemeyer and National Park Service historian Art G?mez have combined talents in a new presentation on New Mexico. Niemeyer's more than 150 color photographs encompass the entire state throughout the seasons presenting New Mexico's people, cultures, and magnificent scenery at the millennium. G?mez's sweeping history views the state in terms of corridors, geographic as well as cultural. New Mexico's mountains, deserts, and rivers form natural corridors that migrating birds and animals have traditionally used for survival. Navigating these same corridors across the state, human cultures of Paleo, Plains and Pueblo Indians, Hispanos, and Anglos forged viable communities on the astringent New Mexican landscape. Pueblo ancestors migrated from austere environments throughout the Southwest to more inviting surroundings on the Rio Grande. Plains Indians from the north and Hispano tradesmen from the south converged via the Camino Real. American settlers migrated west along the Santa Fe Trail, the southernmost corridor around the formidable Rocky Mountains. Improved transportation such as the railroad and later Route 66, precursors to the interstate highway system, annually lured new inhabitants to this compelling land called New Mexico.
A New York Times Book Review Summer Reading Selection “Delves into not only what we eat around the world, but what we once ate and what we have lost since then.”—The New York Times Book Review Two centuries ago, nearly half the North American diet was foraged, hunted, or caught in the wild. Today, so-called “wild foods” are becoming expensive luxuries, served to the wealthy in top restaurants. Meanwhile, people who depend on wild foods for survival and sustenance find their lives forever changed as new markets and roads invade the world’s last untamed landscapes. In Feasting Wild, geographer and anthropologist Gina Rae La Cerva embarks on a global culinary adventure to trace our relationship to wild foods. Throughout her travels, La Cerva reflects on how colonialism and the extinction crisis have impacted wild spaces, and reveals what we sacrifice when we domesticate our foods —including biodiversity, Indigenous and women’s knowledge, a vital connection to nature, and delicious flavors. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, La Cerva investigates the violent “bush meat” trade, tracking elicit delicacies from the rainforests of the Congo Basin to the dinner tables of Europe. In a Danish cemetery, she forages for wild onions with the esteemed staff of Noma. In Sweden––after saying goodbye to a man known only as The Hunter––La Cerva smuggles freshly-caught game meat home to New York in her suitcase, for a feast of “heartbreak moose.” Thoughtful, ambitious, and wide-ranging, Feasting Wild challenges us to take a closer look at the way we eat today, and introduces an exciting new voice in food journalism. “A memorable, genre-defying work that blends anthropology and adventure.”—Elizabeth Kolbert, New York Times-bestselling author of The Sixth Extinction “A food book with a truly original take.”—Mark Kurlansky, New York Times bestselling author of Salt: A World History “An intense and illuminating travelogue... offer[ing] a corrective to the patriarchal white gaze promoted by globetrotting eaters like Anthony Bourdain and Andrew Zimmern. La Cerva combines environmental history with feminist memoir to craft a narrative that's more in tune with recent works by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Helen Macdonald and Elizabeth Rush.”—The Wall Street Journal
New Mexico cultural envoy Juan Estevan Arellano, to whom this work is dedicated, writes that querencia “is that which gives us a sense of place, that which anchors us to the land, that which makes us a unique people, for it implies a deeply rooted knowledge of place, and for that reason we respect it as our home.” This sentiment is echoed in the foreword by Rudolfo Anaya, in which he writes that “querencia is love of home, love of place.” This collection of both deeply personal reflections and carefully researched studies explores the New Mexico homeland through the experiences and perspectives of Chicanx and indigenous/Genízaro writers and scholars from across the state. The importance of querencia for each contributor is apparent in their work and their ongoing studies, which have roots in the culture, history, literature, and popular media of New Mexico. Be inspired and enlightened by these essays and discover the history and belonging that is querencia.
“Completely honest and highly informative. To look at a legislative body is to observe democracy in the raw—with all its diverse characters and influences and its many conflicts, compromises, and achievements. Dede Feldman, a first-rate observer and chronicler, shows us the insides of the New Mexico State Senate.”—Fred Harris, former U.S. Senator and professor emeritus of political science, University of New Mexico Elected to New Mexico’s state senate in 1996, Dede Feldman faced the challenges that confront state legislators around the country along with some that are uniquely New Mexican. In this forthright account of the workings of New Mexico’s legislature, she reveals how the work of governing is actually accomplished. In New Mexico’s part-time citizen legislature, Spanish may be spoken in the halls of the capitol as often as English, and Native American issues are often pivotal. But each year the Land of Enchantment’s legislators, like those in other states, must balance revenues and expenditures, tangle with lobbyists, and struggle with redistricting and campaign finance reform. State legislatures’ approaches to air pollution, drunk driving, and chronic disease, Feldman’s book reveals, find their way into national law after they’ve been road tested on the highways of various states.
Good Night New Mexico explores Albuquerque, Las Cruces, Silver City, Taos, and Santa Fe, Carlsbad Caverns, White Sands National Monument, the Gila Cliff Dwellings, the International UFO Museum Research Center, hot air ballooning, and more. Jump into your hot air balloon and let's explore the great state of New Mexico. Little ones will discover all the unique sights and attractions this lovely region has to offer. This book is part of the bestselling Good Night Our World series, which includes hundreds of titles exploring iconic locations and exciting, child-friendly themes. Many of North America’s most beloved regions are artfully celebrated in these board books designed to soothe children before bedtime while instilling an early appreciation for North America's natural and cultural wonders. Each book stars a multicultural group of people visiting the featured area’s attractions as rhythmic language guides children through the passage of both a single day and the four seasons while saluting the iconic aspects of each place.
This book pays homage to the counterculture movement through the words and photographs of a select gathering of people who lived it. At its height in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the counterculture movement permeated every region of America as thousands of activists took on the establishment. Although counterculture has often been trivialized as “dirty hippies” and “sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll,” committed activists formed powerful strands of resistance to the political/military/industrial complex. American Indians, Hispanos, Blacks, and Anglos joined in marches and protests—often at their peril. Veterans of Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, communards in northern New Mexico, practitioners of drug-induced mysticism, disciplined seekers of spiritual awakening, back-to-the-landers, defenders of wilderness—counterculturalists all—questioned, reframed, and redefined American and global perspectives that remain to this day. The American Southwest became a haven for individuals from both coasts seeking refuge in this vast landscape. Many found an affinity with the native cultures and local inhabitants who were already here. Others joined forces to combat the Vietnam War, racial discrimination, and pillaging of the environment. Still others founded communes based on diverse cultures of practice. Movement leaders organized community events, protests, and spoke for their generation; many used their talents as writers, musicians, artists, and photographers to express their angst and promote change. Jack Loeffler draws from his extensive archive of recorded interviews and transcribed conversations with contemporaries—among them writers, artists, elders, activists, and scholars—including Philip Whalen, Gary Snyder, Edward Abbey, Shonto Begay, Camillus Lopez, Tara Evonne Trudell, Roberta Blackgoat, Richard Grow, Alvin Josephy, David Brower, Dave Foreman, Elinor Ostrom, Fritjof Capra, and Melissa Savage. The book includes personal essays by Yvonne Bond, Peter Coyote, Lisa Law, Peter Rowan, Siddiq Hans von Briesen, Art Kopecky, Bill Steen, Sylvia Rodríguez, Enrique R. Lamadrid, Levi Romero, Rina Swentzell, Gary Paul Nabhan, Meredith Davidson, and Jack Loeffler. It includes photographs by Lisa Law, Seth Roffman, Terrence Moore, and others.