2009 Big Book Review

Outdoor Spaces in the Southwest By Damon Lang Schiffer Publishing, 2009 160 pages, $39.99 Damon Lang's hardback, glossy book will prove as inspiration for those looking to design a space. Lang is a landscaper who transforms difficult spaces into beautiful ones, no matter the challenge. The book showcases dozens of outdoor areas based on his belief that "a great design space can nurture personal well-being by balancing inner an outer peace." Lang's philosophy is evident in the many four-color photographs in the book. Whether it's a Tuscan look, Zen feel or vintage Vegas, it's likely someone wanting to make over an outdoor area will find ideas in this book. There are before and after pictures; there also are project keys, which label the elements used in each design. This includes plants, flowers and trees. What's also good about the book is that its Southwest target makes it useful for Four Corners readers.

Resurrection: Glen Canyon and a New Vision for the American West By Annette McGivney Braided River Books, 2009, 174 pages, $29.95 This book is beautiful. And that's for its images and its stories about a place that is sacred for so many in the Southwest. Glen Canyon is that place that we know holds more than just tons upon tons of water - it also holds broken hearts, lost dreams and major regrets. Author Annette McGivney does a phenomenal job of explaining historical and contemporary issues about Glen Canyon, now known not-so-fondly for some as Lake Powell. Since the mid-1960s when the federal government began flooding a gem of the Southwest to provide water supply for an arid and rapidly developing region, the politics of the project have never disappeared. They rage on, and with each drop of the total volume of the reservoir, the politics become more heated. McGivney writes about these struggles in her first-person accounts of Glen Canyon's accidental (or not) re-emergence of the canyon because of severe and lingering drought. Her stories and information are accompanied by large color photographs taken by James Kay. Together, the story about Glen Canyon and Lake Powell are achingly eloquent. It's important to understand that McGivney's book isn't a recreationist's lament. The author knows there are many books out there that serve that purpose. To move the debate and discourse along, she offers mandates - a strong but honest word - about what the U.S. Department of Interior must do to change its water policies so that Southwest residents can live more sustainable lives. She looks to the federal agency to be the lead; she does not implore residents to be the ringleaders. And this is an important distinction. It's was the federal government that changed everyone's relationship with Glen Canyon the first time; so should it be again, more than 40 years later.

Picture Yourself Going Green: Step-by-Step Instruction for Living a Budget Conscious, Earth-Friendly Lifestyle in Eight Weeks or Less By Erinn Morgan Course Technology, 2009 218 pages, $19.99 The so-called "green" movement - in which people are trying to modify their lifestyles to be more ecologically conscious of how their actions impact the Earth - has full-on gained steam. Courses are part of school curricula, and textbooks, such as Inside/Outside Southwest contributor's Erinn Morgan, are becoming guides to teach people how to go green easily. The title of Morgan's book seems to play on popular "diet" books - selling a concept with a timeline that makes the transition easy. The book delivers on its title. While I didn't incorporate all the steps in eight weeks, the book is replete with ideas that I could quickly introduce into my life. Some of them are ones many readers will have already undertaken. Having that start will make the rest easy to take on. Morgan includes a "Going Green Cost Meter" with each idea so readers know how the changes will hit their pocketbook. This is priceless. Consumers today want to make changes, but the budget is the bottom-line. Morgan does an impressive and complete job describing just how simple a lifestyle change is. Though this book is labeled a textbook, its contents are anything but rudimentary. The information is applicable to any lifestyle, and the arrangement of contents is well-thought out so that readers can pick up the book occasionally and get the information without having to read it cover to cover at once or in sequence.

In the Sun's House: My Year Teaching on the Navajo Reservation By Kurt Caswell Trinity University Press, 2009, 299 pages, $17.95 One can imagine how difficult it is to live on the Navajo Reservation. Members of the largest tribe in the U.S. still reside in ramshackle housing, often without modern-day amenities. There are also the difficulties of becoming immersed with life going on outside the sprawling reservation boundaries, how the "outside" world views Navajos, and the complexities of moving beyond a trying past that, no matter how much progress can be measured, still permeates a group of people who may always feel disenfranchised. Take those difficulties and try to understand how an outsider - a young, white male - would fit in. From those elements comes Kurt Caswell's memoirs about a year of teaching elementary and middle school students at Borrego Pass, which is a tiny place in northwest New Mexico. Caswell engages readers with his candid stories about often feeling disconnected and lacking confidence to embrace these people. The stories are humorous and sad. As many times as Caswell struggles to help his students achieve, he fails. The path to a successful year spent teaching was harder than he expected. Hospitality and respect had to be earned - and when he finds out how that two-way street operates, Caswell leaves his own legacy on a group of students who ultimately learned as much about life as they did academics.

Images of America: Durango By Fred Wildfang Arcadia Publishing, 2009, 127 pages, $21.99 Whether you are a Durango resident or just someone who likes to visit the town, a look to the past with Fred Wildfang's book will help show how it has changed rapidly since the 19th and 20th centuries. The black-and-white photos tell the stories, with captions giving a little bit more context. Flip through the book in one sitting, because it's small enough to pick up and put down without losing any plot. Historian Wildfang has done an admirable job of putting a timeline together, and it helps that he has an interest in keeping the town's history alive and relevant. He and his family have renovated many buildings along East Second Avenue, a block from the town's main street. The renovations has expanded Durango's central shopping and eating district.

Ranch Gates of the Southwest By Daniel M. Olsen and Henk Van Assen Trinity University Press, 2009, 140 pages, $45 My first response to this coffee-table book with four-color photos was to refute the book's title. To me, the Southwest does not include Texas or Oklahoma. This book sees it differently. And too much of both of these states appears in this book to qualify as the title suggests. If you can look past this detail, however minor it may seem, you might enjoy browsing the pages to see the idiosyncrasies of the people who created their ranch gates. They are creative, odd, and pedestrian. Maybe even more so if you have a gateway to your own ranch and you took time to create an entrance that represented who you and your land are. Otherwise, the book doesn't always keep your interest. The effort to tell stories through property entries is admirable, but the uniqueness is lacking. Still, the photographs are pretty and artistic.

Broken, A Love Story: Horses, Humans, and Redemption on the Wind River Indian Reservation By Lisa Jones Scribner, 2009, 275 pages, $25 Stanford Addison has a talent. A quadriplegic, the Northern Arapaho Indian is said have the ability to transform people, but mostly people. He lives on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming, where tough exteriors are often the norm. For many years, a tough exterior was what Addison had. When he was 20 years old, he was paralyzed in an accident, later to be confined to a wheelchair. As author Lisa Jones writes, Addison was brutal, suicidal and full of rage. That person could last only so long. Eventually, the core of Addison poked through, and in the process a new man with skills to tame wildness in animals came to the fore. It was a transformation that Addison was able to understand in other species. Those qualities are what endeared Jones to Addison. She writes about meeting the horse whisperer and how, over repeated visits with him, she becomes enamored with his mystical abilities. Jones' engaging storytelling makes it easy for readers to share that fondness of Addison. She is gentle when she writes about him. An underlying theme to Addison's special abilities is the journey Jones also is on. While spending time with him, she, too, is learning about life's challenges in discovering herself.

Wild Sorrow: A Wild Mystery By Sandi Ault Penguin Group, 2009 293 pages, $24.95 Sandi Ault has been likened to the late well-loved mystery writer Tony Hillerman. Typically, I'm not a fan of compartmentalizing writers, especially when newer ones are trying to stand on their own reputations. This time, I give in a bit and agree to an extent that Ault is like Hillerman. Both are mystery writers whose characters are so integral to the landscape that it for people who live near the land, the story's details are vivid; for those who don't live nearby, the mystery of a place becomes almost idealized. Such is the case with Wild Sorrow, a novel about Jamaica Wild, a resource agent for the Bureau of Land Management in Taos, N.M. While trying to get her horse out of a raging storm one day, Wild and her injured pet, Rooster, discover the frozen corpse of Cassie, a former official of an Indian school who was known by her wounded as someone whose hard heart caused them tough times when she humiliated and deprived them of their dignity. She was known to beat the students, too. Intrigued by the frozen body, Jamaica Wild works with agencies to find out who killed Cassie and why. As the investigation moves through legal processes, Wild learns that Cassie likely was a victim of a hate crime. That she involved herself in trying to find answers to a mystery angered some, and she turns from curious investigator to the target of Cassie's killer.

The Great Waves of Change: Navigating the Difficult Times Ahead By Marshall Vian Summers The Society for The Greater Community Way of Knowledge, 2009 232 pages, $14.95 Some may view Marshall Vian Summers as Chicken Little. He thinks the sky is falling. It's true that our world is going through many changes, but for better or for worse, that's what the world does. We can't stay stagnant; progress doesn't always mean every change will be positive. But in this book, Summers tries to capitalize on fear-mongering. A good deal of what he writes is reminiscent of the Y2K hype nearly a decade ago. Summers discusses the various global changes taking place: political unrest, climate change, diminishing water and land supplies, war and a declining economy. He touches on these subjects to get readers to believe we are at an unprecedented time in history. He calls his book a crash course on how to survive the turbulence, and much of his advice is how to "connect to a deeper authority within" to get by. If you take some tidbits of advice out of context, they seem sensible. But that's not what you get to do when you write an entire book. You have to weigh all information on a whole. Summers' revelation that he is sometimes given messages by extraterrestrials or a divine source and his cloying religious/God-centered messages make this book a turn-off for everyone except those apocalyptic believers just like him. To his credit, Summers tries to draw in a varied audience by including meditation practices and steps to review one's spirituality, relationships and possessions. It's a good attempt, but on the most important level Summers fails to recognize the incongruent nature of extraterrestrials and Eastern spiritual philosophy.

Icarus Dreams By Kathleen Browning Shadow Poetry, 2008, 44 pages, $10 Farmington poet Kathleen Browning's second published book of poetry is once again proof that contemporary poetry has its place in the literary world. It also is evidence that the rigors of classic poetry are adaptable for a new audience. As I wrote in my review about Browning's first book of poems, her writing is accessible. Reading her work does not feel like you are suffering through the writer's thought experiments or word puzzles where they leave just enough missing pieces that you never really figure it out. I'll concede that those experiences with traditional poetry are based partly in lack of education. I don't feel that way reading Browning. I let go of the preconceived notion that a book of poems will be dull and traditional. Browning's poems are deeply personal, but they do not revolve around obsessions with the self. Her free verse and colloquial speech are imaginative and refreshing. They are comprehensible, descriptive, and at times even whimsical. To wit, an opening passage from one my favorites, "Lost": Somewhere along the way our love got lost like a child in the supermarket and I searched for it, frantic, among the lettuce and cabbage leaves so green, so tender and fresh I thought it must be springtime