Sherry Robinson - Böcker

West central New Mexico offers some of the most diverse and fascinating landforms in the Southwest. Volcanic activity shaped the tortured landscape of El Malpais in the recent geologic past. The broad mass of Mount Taylor, an 11,389-foot volcano from another age, is the setting for a popular quadrathlon. And the gentle and park-like Zuni Mountains are ideal for hiking, biking, or a Sunday drive. The three areas provide unique outdoor experiences made more accessible by Sherry Robinson's El Malpais, Mt. Taylor, and the Zuni Mountains. Descriptions of hiking trails for each area include levels of difficulty, access, directions, photographs, and maps. Biking, skiing, caving, and auto tours are also included. Learning about the natural history of this special place can only enhance the experience, so Robinson provides descriptions of the geology, flora, and fauna of all three areas. She covers the region's unusual and little known history in lively and readable accounts that include the Acoma, Zuni, Laguna, and Navajo people's use of and relationship to the area.

In the 1940s and 1950s, long before historians fully accepted oral tradition as a source, Eve Ball (1890-1984) was taking down verbatim the accounts of Apache elders who had survived the army's campaigns against them in the last century. These oral histories offer new versions -- from Warm Springs, Chiricahua, Mescalero, and Lipan Apache -- of events previously known only through descriptions left by non-Indians. A high school and college teacher, Ball moved to Ruidoso, New Mexico, in 1942. After winning their confidence, Ball would ultimately interview sixty-seven Apache people.

Veteran journalist and author Sherry Robinson presents readers with the first full biography of New Mexico's first territorial governor, James Silas Calhoun. Robinson explores Calhoun's early life in Georgia and his military service in the Mexican War and how they led him west. Through exhaustive research Robinson shares Calhoun's story of arriving in New Mexico in 1849—a turbulent time in the region—to serve as its first Indian agent. Inhabitants were struggling to determine where their allegiances lay; they had historic and cultural ties with Mexico, but the United States offered an abundance of possibilities.An accomplished attorney, judge, legislator, and businessman and an experienced speaker and negotiator who spoke Spanish, Calhoun was uniquely qualified to serve as the first territorial governor only eighteen months into his service. While his time on the New Mexico political scene was brief, he served with passion, intelligence, and goodwill, making him one of the most intriguing political figures in the history of New Mexico.