We do not think that you need an excuse to read, the presence of a good book is reason enough. Fortunately, the UNM Press has a long history of producing very readable books. There are over 1200 titles in the back catalog that are available in the UNM Libraries and through the UNM Press website.
From music and poetry to family and work to arts and crafts, there are no shortage of topics from which to choose. Staff have selected some titles that piqued their interest. Do any of these interest you?
Land of a Thousand Dances by
"It's fascinating to read this alternative history of pop music, as Land of a Thousand Dances offers a wealth of anecdotes, interviews, and facts that have never been so meticulously documented. The book helps fill one of the biggest gaps in the rock timeline, ensuring that rock 'n' roll's Chicano roots will not be forgotten."--A. V. Club "Authors [David] Reyes and [Tom] Waldman give a flavorful overview of the ever-changing East L.A. scene. . . . They note that barrio culture, which so richly intertwines American and Mexican traditions, has given rise to groups who move through many different types of music with ease, as well as the type of fans who can appreciate them all."--Raza Report "[Land of a Thousand Dances] is written with insight and intelligence and I highly recommend it."--Mark Guerro, member of Mark & the Escorts, Tango, and Radio Aztlan "The first edition of this definitive history of California Chicano rock pioneers, published in 1998, highlighted such early groups as Ritchie Valens, Cannibal & the Headhunters, and Thee Midniters as well as punk leaders the Plugz, culminating with the musically eclectic Los Lobos. In this revised and expanded edition, authors Reyes, a Chicano music historian and archivist, and Waldman (Not Much Left: The Fate of Liberalism in America) include material about newer artists such as Quetzal and Lysa Flores. In the ten years since the book was first published, California's Spanish-speaking population has dramatically increased, and there is growing interest in Mexican rock and all the other Mexican musical genres. This book should appeal to any fan of Latino rock who wants to know about its roots and development."--Library Journal For this edition, the authors have written a new introduction.
Dance of the Eggshells by
Libby and her older brother, J. D., don't get along, and their relationship is tested in an unexpected way when they visit their grandparents in Santa Fe. It's the week after Easter and Grandma Socorro is eager to share a cultural tradition with her grandchildren--the Baile de los Cascarones, the Dance of the Eggshells. Although both children are skeptical, Libby soon immerses herself in carefully emptying and rinsing the cascarones, or eggshells, then filling them with brightly colored confetti. As Libby decorates them, Grandma Socorro tells her about the Spanish tradition. At the Baile de los Cascarones, people ask one another to dance by gently crushing cascarones over their heads. When the day of the baile arrives, Libby is excited to take part in the fun. While J. D. bombards his cousins with cascarones and ignores the dancing, Libby learns every traditional dance. During the popular Baile de la Escoba (the Broom Dance), J. D. is forced to dance and Libby saves him from embarrassment. This bilingual children's story explores the family bond created through traditions passed on by grandparents. Through Libby's first exposure to the Baile de los Cascarones, author Carla Aragón recounts one of her favorite customs while growing up in Santa Fe.
Amazing Paper Airplanes by
In this book Kyong Hwa Lee combines the art of origami and the science of flight to create unique paper airplane designs for aviation enthusiasts of all ages. Featuring thirty-two designs, Amazing Paper Airplanes showcases models resembling real-world aircraft, including the F-22 fighter jet, a P-51 World War II plane, the Convair F-102 Delta Daggerâ?"the first supersonic delta-wing interceptor airplane of the US Air Forceâ?"and more. For these models, Lee provides information along with an image of the real plane to encourage interest in aerospace technology. Every design has been flight-tested and presents complete step-by-step folding instructions. In addition to showing basic and advanced folding techniques and providing templates for each plane, the author explains the theory behind flight and offers tips to fine-tune paper airplanes for optimal flying.
Blood Desert by
In narrative poems that take us back to New Mexico during the nineteenth century, Renny Golden resurrects the spirits of native people and of those who came West. To read these poems is to hear the voices of Padre Martínez and Bishop Lamy, Geronimo and General Crook, Billy the Kid and Sister Blandina. "Blood Desert is history that breaks into song, and readers are drawn into a chorus of voices that have gone unheard--women, indigenous peoples and more. What marvelous poetry, what powerful stories! Readers will not be able to put this book down."--Demetria Martínez, author of Mother Tongue and Confessions of a Berlitz-Tape Chicana. "From the end of Spanish colonial rule in 1821, to the United States invasion of 1846, to the surrender of Geronimo, these poems provide a lyrical alternative history that enlightens the reader."--Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of Roots of Resistance: A History of Land Tenure in New Mexico.
The Woman Who Married a Bear by
Winner of the Kenyon Review Earthworks Prize for Indigenous Poetry, Tiffany Midge deftly weaves Plains Indian myths into the present day and seeks to define love, the nature of desire, and identity in the twenty-first century. The book includes a series of poems, each titled "Considering Wakantanka," that connect the themes throughout the book. The Woman Who Married a Bear showcases the wholly individual voice of a talented poet.
A Selected History of Her Heart by
Travel, blood, and transgression are the materials that art shapes in these poems. Carole Simmons Oles's work moves among physical, spiritual, and metaphorical frontiers where East meets West, where relationships are forged and broken, and where a woman can now reflect on the experiences that have shaped her life.
A Woman in the Great Outdoors by
Melody Webb's reflections on her twenty-five-year-long career in the National Park Service is an insider's account of a public bureaucracy. As a woman, she was working in a male-dominated agency; as an idealist, she attempted to champion the wise use of the national parks in a pragmatic political agency. Webb's career began in Alaska during President Gerald Ford's administration. She helped set up the mechanism that permitted Alaskan Natives to claim up to 2 million acres of federal land to preserve culturally significant areas. Following a dozen years of historic preservation work in Alaska and New Mexico, Webb spent the second half of her tenure in management positions. She served as superintendent at the Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park and then as assistant superintendent, in charge of all park operations at Grand Teton National Park. During this period the Park Service was faced with conflicting mandates: there was a growing demand for recreational land use and, at the same time, environmental requirements and tight budgets limited the NPS's options. Webb's frankness about the day-to-day politics within an institution that many Americans feel should be above politics make this book an eye opener for historians and anyone who has an interest in the National Park System.
Creative Collectives by
A compelling blend of art history, social analysis, and personal testimony, Creative Collectives presents a new paradigm for understanding Chicana/o studies. By following the artistic and ideological journeys of two groups of northern California Chicana artists, María Ochoa argues that the women involved in these collectives created complex images whose powerful visual social commentary sprang from the daily experiences of their lives. Ochoa's artistic narrative first focuses on Mujeres Muralistas, a pathbreaking San Francisco group of mural painters organized in the early 1970s at the height of the Chicana/o Movement. The story then turns its attention to Co-Madres Artistas, a group of artists who came together in the 1990s after spending decades tending their families, becoming successful in their careers, and launching key Chicana/o cultural institutions in the Sacramento Valley. Ochoa tells the stories of the individual members of these collectives to show how they combined art and activism. Through an innovative application of oral history interviews, a fascinating compilation of individual and collective stories emerges. Creative Collectives is notable for its skillful weaving of personal recollections, representational analysis of mural and easel painting, and social movement narration.
Letters Like the Day by
Georgia O'Keeffe mistrusted words. She claimed color as her language. Nevertheless, in the course of her long life, the great American painter wrote thousands of letters--more than two thousand survive between her and her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, alone. Jennifer Sinor's Letters Like the Day honors O'Keeffe, her modernist landscapes, and, crucially, the value of letter writing. In the painter's correspondence, we find an intimacy with words that is all her own. Taking her letters as a touchstone, Sinor experiments with the limits of language using the same aesthetic that drove O'Keeffe's art. Through magnification, cropping, and juxtaposition--hallmarks of modernism--Sinor explores the larger truths at the center of O'Keeffe's work: how we see, capture, and create. Letters Like the Day pursues the highest function of art--to take one's medium to the edge and then push beyond.
Black Physicians Struggle for Civil Rights by
"This powerful biography traces the career of an African American physician and civil rights advocate, Edward Craig Mazique (1911-1987), from the poverty and discrimination of Natchez, Mississippi, to his status as a prominent physician in Washington, D.C. Florence Ridlon relates how Dr. Mazique's grandfather went from being a slave to becoming one of the largest landowners in Adams County, Mississippi. This moving story of one man's accomplishments, in spite of many opposing forces, is also a chapter in the struggle of African Americans to achieve equality in the twentieth-century. At a time when blacks were being denied entry into the American Medical Association and the staffs of most hospitals, Dr. Mazique was president of the Medico-Chirurgical Society and the National Medical Association, black counterparts to the all-white District Medical Society and American Medical Association. Dr. Mazique worked closely with Martin Luther King, Jr. and presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson as well as black physicians, to expand the availability of health care at a time when many conservative physicians, both black and white, opposed the establishment of Medicare and other federal health programs. Much of this story is in Dr. Mazique's own words, taken from interviews with the author. What emerges from this biography is a picture of an exceptional but very human man, who, despite discrimination and repression, excelled beyond all expectations. From A Black Physician's Struggle for Civil Rights "The power he had! I don't think there was a president that occupied that White House that didn't have him there for consultation. He was so respected as a human being, above and beyond medicine. When the people in the Civil Rights movement would say things to government people, they were suspect because they had to make political decisions. Eddie was someone they could call in who they not only trusted but respected. He had the type of integrity that even if government leaders wouldn't listen to his advice or follow up, the civil rights people knew when he went to see presidents and stuff, he wasn't back there lying. That was the great thing about him--his honesty and integrity."--comedian and political activist, Dick Gregory, speaking about Dr. Mazique in an interview with Florence Ridlon"
Hot Coffee and Cold Truth by
This collection of essays is from some of Western Americana's best-loved and most-read writers, including Margaret Coel, Elmer Kelton, Don Coldsmith, Robert Utley, and David Dary. Editor W. C. Jameson began the project after reading Elmer Kelton's The Time it Never Rained. "I longed to ask Kelton how he did what he did. Where did he come up with the words? How did he know how to coax them onto the page and arrange them with such skillful expertise? I wanted to ask him how the Western landscape sparked his imagination, inspired his ideas, and influenced his style. I yearned to know more about him, about his obvious, intimate connection to the land, a relationship that he adroitly manifested between the covers of his books." Jameson encountered many authors, some successfully published and some just beginning their careers, who had similar questions for other known writers. There are three basic threads that run through these pieces: first, each writer has an intense and memorable connection to the land; second, each possesses a keen curiosity, a desire to seek out other people and times, a wanderlust to discover what lies beyond the limits of the cities; and finally, they all have a passion to write.
Of Love and Other Passions by
In Of Love and Other Passions Guiomar Dueñas-Vargas delves into the world of emotions among the bourgeois elite in Bogotá from the end of the colonial period to 1870. While most studies of the period focus solely on the countryâ??s political activity, Dueñas-Vargas shows how Colombiaâ??s social, cultural, and political changes transformed the meaning of love, which contributed to the evolution of new models of femininity and masculinity. By examining sources such as personal letters and diaries, Dueñas-Vargas presents the emotional profiles of families and couples, demonstrating how their conduct challenged the established order. As lovers insisted on choosing their own mates rather than marrying spouses selected by their parents, they undermined the patriarchal structure of Colombian society. Such decisions unveil the many functions women assumed in both public and private life and how they participated in the invention of a nation.
