2 comments about Children's Guide to Santa Fe (New and Revised).

1. This book is a delight, and an essential tool for Santa Fe parents and visitors. Every home should have one. It's a complete, clear, and enticing guide to the things children of all ages can enjoy in Santa Fe. It made me want to borrow friends' children or be a kid again, myself.
   
   D.Potter



2. This is one of two great guidebooks written for parents to help them select places to visit and activities to include when they take their children to Santa Fe. Both this guide and "Santa Fe with Kids" provide basic information about the usual activities and attractions popular with children in Santa Fe: the Children's mMseum, Palace of the Governors, the Plaza, and lots of others. You can't go wrong with either of these.
   
   This guide is a little more "scholarly" than the other. It begins with several pages of child-friendly facts about Santa Fe's history, and includes more activities related to the arts and culture.
   
   Both guides describe fun day trips from Santa Fe, but this one includes a good bit of information on attractions and activities for children in Albuquerque (and Los Alamos) that is useful if you plan to spend time there as well.
   
   Overall, this guide contains more information than the other (it's longer and a little more expensive) and it has a wonderful drawing of the Plaza on the cover. It does lack the information about child-friendly restaurants that the other guide provides.
   
   Of course, if you are looking for a guide that is written for children rather than for parents--one that can be your child's own--I recommend I See Santa Fe! A Children's Guide and Coloring Book
   
   -Lynn Michelsohn, author of Roswell, Your Travel Guide to the UFO Capital of the World!

2 comments about New Light on Chaco Canyon.

1. Great book which debunks many of the myths concerning this mysterious place. Highly recommended.



2. When this book was published in 1984 it may indeed have been new information but much has been discovered since then. ...

5 comments about Ghost Towns and Mining Camps of New Mexico.

1. The history in this book is great and it's full of pictures; however, many are no longer accurate. The book was published in 1975 and much of what used to be there is no longer there and/or the properties are inaccessable because they are on private lands.



2. This well-researched book is an old standard and well worth owning. Unfortunately, it suffers from being a bit outdated, having been written before the population explosion in the southwest during the past 20 years. The descriptions are frequently of remains and ruins no longer in existence, plundered, or merely part of new, cutesy 'discovered' communities of gingerbread and bricabrack. A lot of the ghost towns, I might have said, have been reincarnated.

   Even so, there's not a better book anywhere about the ghost towns of New Mexico as they existed 20-30 years ago.




3. The info may be dated, true, as mentioned above, but more importantly, the sketchy maps (in the back, not with each entry) have no detail and out of date or road numbers/names which will make finding many of the sites impossible. Good, old B&W photos, though.



4. This is an excellent ghost town book and essential for anyone hunting ghosts in New Mexico. Sites are listed alphabetically; when its post office was in existence is also given. Then each site is keyed to a map found in the back of the book; the maps are fairly detailed and if used with recent topo maps (such as DeLorme) quite useful. Most of these townsites should be able to be found without too much difficulty. Detailed information about each place is also related by Sherman. Finally there are a ton of photographs (some historical, most recent) included. If you can't get out into the field to track any of these places down, it's still a great book for armchair travellers. Very informative no matter how you look at it.



5. This is a very interesting and entertaining book. It fills in the blanks on areas that I have seen and/or heard about. The stories that are included are very entertaining as a bonus. Really fun reading.

No comments about An Architectural Guidebook to the National Parks--the Southwest: Arizona, New Mexico, Texas.

No comments about Free Flow: The Gila River in New Mexico.

No comments about New Mexico: A New Guide to the Colorful State.

4 comments about Great Hot Springs of the West: Arizona California Colorado Montana Idaho Nevada New Mexico Oregon Utah Washington Wyoming.

1. depending on what your looking for you may not want this guide. it has a fairly well established list to many commercial hot springs, but little else. If your looking for hot springs where you can hook up your RV then this guide may work for you. If on the other hand your looking for real, natural hot springs off the beaten path, then this guide is worthless.



2. We have tried one hot spring listing and enjoyed our hot soak, found one shut down, one remodeling and one a bit too pricey for us. Would like to see some reference to actual costs rather than than reasonable or free or deluxe. One place inacessible without 4 wheel drive but we will keep trying, the maps are good.



3. This book does a great public disservice. The information in the book has not been updated in years and is terribly outdated. Quite a bit of the information is absolutely wrong. Send the publisher a message - don't buy the book until they update it. Save your money, there are much better, current books out there such as "Hot Springs and Hot Pools of the Southwest" & Northwest - which are updated ever two years



4. The only useful thing about this writer's books on hot springs are the USGS maps and the latitude/longitudes. I bought a book of his nearly 20 years ago and was thoroughly dissatisfied, & was incensed when it seemed to me he was more interested in providing info for the land yacht crowd. I wonder if his book alleging that the lunar landings were hoaxes is any better. I doubt it. He probably denies the Holocaust took place, too. If you want a book on hot springs, check out Jayson Loam's books. They are much better. If you want info on faked lunar landings, get the movie "Capricorn One."

1 comments about The Memoirs of Fray Servando Teresa de Mier (Library of Latin America).

1. An extraordinary book. One of Oxford University Press' 'Library of Latin America' series, translated from the Spanish by Helen Lane, here is a tome worthy of high praise. Fray Servando Teresa de Mier y Noriega (Mexico, 1763-1827), persecuted by the Inquisition for thirty years for his challenge to the colonial mentality and his willingness "to play an active role in movements of emancipation," Written in the Inquisitor's prisons, this is a topsy-turvy book where Europeans are the barbarians. Refreshing! De Mier was famed in his own time as a scholar and thinker, &indeed these 240 pages unsheathe a remarkable man, revealing with a novelist's succinct eye the true nature of the world and its passing, and our time in it. Impossible to overstate the beauty and severity of a spirituality in high bloom. Recommended.

No comments about Pirates of New Spain, 1575-1742.

3 comments about Pueblo Pottery Families: Acoma, Cochiti, Hopi, Isleta, Jemez, Laguna, Nambe, Picuris, Pojoaque, San Il San Juan, Santa Clara, Santo Domingo, Taos, Tesuque, Zia, Zuni.

1. This book is an excellent resource if you are interested in collecting pottery from all peublos as well as a variety of families. Although not quite as in depth as Rick Dillingmham's Fourteen Families, she does mention many families that he does not.



2. Unfortunately, this book promises a lot more than it delivers. For example, in its preface, it mentions several families of potters at Acoma named Lewis not related to Lucy Lewis, but they are not even mentioned. Even the section on the family of Lucy Lewis is barely 2 pages. The author for the most part barely skims the surface. I desperately wanted to like this book, but the more I read it, the more I saw was lacking. For one thing, it seriously needed a much better editor. It reads like a grade school student's social studies report, and it is filled with typos, the worst being that many of the photo captions are wrong because the photos were flipped and the captions were not corrected. A major disappointment for the price. Fortunately I bought it in paperback! It did have some good information, but it could have and should have had much more.



3. The book provided insight into the relationships of the potters on the different pueblos. We like the book. It is inexpensive. We will have it available when we visit the different pueblos.