Herbert Eugene Bolton's classic of southwestern history, first published in 1949, delivers the epic account of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado's sixteenth-century entrada to the North American frontier of the Spanish Empire. Leaving Mexico City in 1540 with some three hundred Spaniards and a large body of Indian allies, Coronado and his men--the first Europeans to explore what are now Arizona and New Mexico--continued on to the buffalo-covered plains of Texas and into Oklahoma and Kansas. With documents in hand, Bolton personally followed the path of the Coronado expedition, providing readers with unsurpassed storytelling and meticulous research.

Coronado: Knight of Pueblos and Plains

Biographies & Memoirs

Bolton, Herbert E.

Historical

UNM Press

When it was first published in 1934, Erna Fergusson's Mexican Cookbook made authentic Mexican recipes accessible to cooks nationwide--including celebrated favorites such as enchiladas, chile rellenos, and carne adovada, as well as the simple, rustic foods traditionally prepared and served in New Mexican homes.
Inspired by the delight and enthusiasm with which visitors to the Southwest partook of the region's cuisine, this popular cookbook remains an enduring tribute to the ambience and spirit of territorial New Mexico.

Mexican Cookbook

Cookbooks, Food & Wine

Fergusson, Erna

Regional & International

Now back in print after more than thirty years, The Zunis: Self-Portrayals offers forty-six stories of myth, prophecy, and history from the great oral literature of the Zuni Indians of New Mexico. Selected by the Zuni people themselves, the tales told here preserve their cultural traditions--from the Zuni creation myth and the rituals of masked dances to farming and hunting practices and battles with Navajos and Apaches. There are tales about ghosts and personified animals, and fables told to discipline children or to warn them against foolhardy bravery and braggadocio. Some of the stories are moral fables, and some are intended as entertainment pure and simple, tales told by a skillful narrator to pass a long evening.

The Zunis: Self-Portrayals

Politics & Social Sciences

The Zuni People

Social Sciences

This is the story of Edith Warner, who lived for more than twenty years as a neighbor to the Indians of San Ildefonso Pueblo, near Los Alamos, New Mexico. She was a remarkable woman, a friend to everyone who knew her, from her Indian companion Tilano, who was an elder of San Ildefonso, to Niels Bohr, Robert Oppenheimer, and the other atomic scientists who worked at Los Alamos during World War II.
"A finely told tale of a strange land and of a rare character who united with it and, without seeming to do anything to that end, exerted an unusual influence upon all other lovers of that soil with whom she came in contact. The quality of the country, of the many kinds of people, and of the central character come through excellently." --Oliver La Farge

The House at Otowi Bridge: The Story of Edith Warner and Los Alamos (Zia Books)

Church, Peggy Pond

The California Gold Rush was only the first of a series of rushes that brought the first permanent settlers to much of the Far West between 1848 and 1880. Despite a flood of popular writings on separate mining regions, this book is the first to view the entire movement as an integral part of the settlement process.
The author displays a thorough knowledge of all aspects of western mining: geology, technology, and economics, as well as history. His emphasis is not on bad men and vigilantes but on the ingenious contrivers of new techniques and machinery, the hardheaded capitalists who subsidized the development of the most promising mines, the builders of the transportation routes needed to link mining camps with markets.
 "A long-needed book, rising far above the usual superficial romantic nonsense that surrounds the subject."--Virginia Quarterly
 "With a fresh, penetrating approach, Paul strips away the glamor and views the mining frontiers not only in their bearing on national development, but also in terms of their interrelationship with each other."--American Historical Review

Mining Frontiers of the Far West, 1848-1880 (Histories of the American Frontier Series)

History

Paul, Rodman Wilson

Americas

Anasazi, the Navajos' name for the "Ancient Ones" who preceded them into the Southwest, is the nickname of Richard Wetherill, who devoted his life to a search for remains of these vanished peoples. He discovered the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde and Kiet Siel and the Basket Maker sites at Grand Gulch, Utah, and at Chaco Canyon he initiated the excavation of Pueblo Bonito, the largest prehistoric ruin in the United States. His discoveries are among the most important ever made by an American archaeologist.

Richard Wetherill - Anasazi: Pioneer Explorer of Southwestern Ruins

McNitt, Frank

Professionals & Academics

This book is an excellent listing of the edible plants of the Rockies. It provides recipes for the preparation of beers and wines, jams and preserves, the cooking of greens and the preparation of dyes, as well as brief histories of the plants' uses by historic and prehistoric peoples. The book contains drawings of the plants in their flowering or fruiting state and lists them by common name as well as scientific name for ready reference.

Edible Native Plants of the Rocky Mountains

Science & Math

Harrington, H.D.

Biological Sciences

No New Mexican should be without this useful volume, the first history of New Mexico in many years to be published with the official sanction of the state. The general reader, the newcomer to New Mexico, and the student will find remarkably detailed information here on every aspect of New Mexico's past.
The authors begin their survey with New Mexico's earliest inhabitants, prehistoric Sandia and Folsom men, and carry it up to such contemporary developments as the construction of Cochiti Dam. Their narrative covers such major subjects as exploration and settlement, westward expansion, political and military affairs, commerce and trade, ranching and agriculture, lumbering and mining, science, religion, culture, and education.

A Brief History of New Mexico

Jenkins, Myra Ellen

Schroeder, Albert H.

As The Surrounded opens, Archilde León has just returned from the big city to his father's ranch on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana. The story that unfolds captures the intense and varied conflict that already characterized reservation life in 1936, when this remarkable novel was first published. 
Educated at a federal Indian boarding school, Archilde is torn not only between white and Indian cultures but also between love for his Spanish father and his Indian mother, who in her old age is rejecting white culture and religion to return to the ways of her people. Archilde's young contemporaries, meanwhile, are succumbing to the destructive influence of reservation life, growing increasingly uprooted, dissolute, and hopeless. Although Archilde plans to leave the reservation after a brief visit, his entanglements delay his departure until he faces destruction by the white man's law. 
In an early review of The Surrounded, Oliver La Farge praised it as "simple, clear, direct, devoid of affectations, and fast-moving." He included it in his "small list of creditable modern novels using the first Americans as theme." Several decades later, long out of print but not forgotten, The Surrounded is still considered one of the best works of fiction by or about Native Americans.

The Surrounded (Zia Books)

Literature & Fiction

McNickle, D'Arcy

United States

Tularosa--sun-scorched, sandblasted, merciless--the parched desert where everything, from cactus to cowman, carries a weapon of some sort, and the only creatures who sleep with both eyes closed are dead. Tularosa--the last frontier in the continental United States. C. L. Sonnichsen, an authority on the Southwest, writing from primary records and conversations with survivors of Tularosa's pioneer days, tells the stories of the great cattle ranchers pitted against daring rustlers, elite men against Apaches, desperados against law men. Here are Oliver Lee, Pat Garrett, and Bill McNew. And here is the feud between Col. A. J. Fountain and Albert Fall. Sonnichsen has updated his history for this new edition with a revised final chapter bringing the drama of Tularosa and the New Mexican frontier West into the Atomic Age.

Tularosa: Last of the Frontier West

Sonnichsen, C.L.

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the UNM Press publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by UNM Press