The Great Southwest [antikvár]

Forewordi have had a hand in 94 National Geographic books, but this one, more than all the others, holds a special charm for me. It chronicles a sunburnt comer of our country whose geological wonders are rivaled only by the stalwart brand of people who live there, sustained by a piO' neering spirit that won't go away.For me, The Great Southtuest is a book of memories. Both of my parents were born in Indian Territory long before Theodore Roosevelt's signature put Oklahoma's star on our flag. My mother, a quarter-blood Cheyenne, was bom in a tepee, and she could remember her mother's frightening account of soldiers' bullets whining past during the fighting at Sand Hill in 1875, one of the last Indian skirmishes in the Territory.This book also reminds us that the Southwest has, at times, been cruel to red man and white man alike. I grew up during the Dust Bowl days, and can recall the strange reddish brown clouds that rolled in to darken the sun. Chickens would go to roost at noon. And I can remember the exodusbattered old cars and trucks laboring past our house on U. 5. Highway 66, heading west for the promised land.Today a new and different Southwest greets my children when I take them there to visit. Drilling rigs dot the landscape. Modem farms, irrigated and fertilized, green the countryside. For several decades the people who left have been coming back, joined by thousands of newcomers. Ironically, the Southwest now finds itself the promised land.Charles McCarry's lyrical text about this distinctive region rings true. For me it paints vivid pictures of the people, the places, the past. As I read I can hear the summer winds whisper in the cottonwoods; I can close my eyes and catch that special fragrance that only comes when rain freshens a thirsty prairie.George Mobley's photographic genius presents a brilliant array of images from one of the richest scenic areas on the planet. His mountains soar majestically. His wild flowers duplicate nature's most extravagant palettes. His sunsets radiate a special reverence.World traveler and author D. H. Lawrence felt such reverence when he first visited the Southwest. "It certainly has changed me for ever. . . the moment I saw the brilliant, proud morning shine high up over the desert of Santa Fe, something stood still in my soul. "There are many different ways to delineate the Southwest; the boundaries may be historical, political, sociological, climatic. The Southwest of this book coincides with the essentially arid zone that centers upon and fans out from the desert provinces of New Mexico and Arizona; it takes in most of Texas, portions of Oklahoma, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada, and the desert country of southern Califomia.Surprisingly, perhaps, the Southwest's shortage of rainfall has not stifled it, but rather has produced a land as diverse and beautiful as any on earth, and has bred a people as proud, as fiercely independent, yet as friendly as you'll find anywhere. The reader need not be a Southwestem-er to become totally absorbed in the pages that follow.Donald J. Crump