Illustrates the importance of the people-plant relationship that has existed throughout the ages among Native peoples.

An English/Spanish bilingual fantasy rooted in the cultural context of the Hispanic Southwest.

“No single existing publication includes the kind of information featured in this book,” a natural history of the flora of the Lone Star State (A. Michael Powell, Professor of Biology Emeritus and Director of the Herbarium, Sul Ross State University). With some 6,000 species of plants, Texas has extraordinary botanical wealth and diversity. Learning to identify plants is the first step in understanding their vital role in nature, and many field guides have been published for that purpose. But to fully appreciate how Texas’s native plants have sustained people and animals from prehistoric times to the present, you need Remarkable Plants of Texas. In this intriguing book, Matt Warnock Turner explores the little-known facts—be they archaeological, historical, material, medicinal, culinary, or cultural—behind our familiar botanical landscape. In sixty-five entries that cover over eighty of our most common native plants from trees, shrubs, and wildflowers to grasses, cacti, vines, and aquatics, he traces our vast array of connections with plants. Turner looks at how people have used plants for food, shelter, medicine, and economic subsistence; how plants have figured in the historical record and in Texas folklore; how plants nourish wildlife; and how some plants have unusual ecological or biological characteristics. Illustrated with over one hundred color photos and organized for easy reference, Remarkable Plants of Texas can function as a guide to individual species as well as an enjoyable natural history of our most fascinating native plants.

Published in cooperation with Canyonlands Natural History Association, this comprehensive and beautifully illustrated trailside reference describes more than 270 plants and animals plus geology of an area that includes nine national parks and monuments in the Southwest. A Naturalist's Guide to Canyon Country is the essential tool for exploring the northern Colorado Plateau, that vast province that encompasses eastern Utah, far western Colorado, and sections of northern Arizona and New Mexico. With this fully updated and revised guide in hand, you will gain a sympathetic understanding of the desert ecosystems that make up the region.

Book II of the Anasazi Mysteries from New York Times bestselling authors Kathleen O'Neal Gear and Michael W. Gear, The Summoning God is more than a superb murder mystery, it is a psychological thriller with blockbuster action, romance and suspense, and best of all a dynamic plot that will have you holding your breath waiting for the nest step down the dark labyrinth of their serial murderer's mind. When world-renowned Canadian Physical Anthropologist, Dr. Maureen Cole, is called to the United States to analyze burials found in an ancient subterranean ceremonial chamber, she is stunned to discover the burned bodies of thirty-three children and two adults. The children were burned in the flesh, meaning they were alive when the fire started, but was the fire an accident or deliberately set? The scattered, mutilated remains of the adults give Maureen her first clue. In order to solve the mystery she must work with American archaeologist William Dusty Stewart. They've worked on two archaeological projects in the past and get along like a mongoose and a cobra. Now they must work together to discover the dark and terrible secret of an ancient people. The Gears seamlessly weave together modern archaeology and ancient history. Like all of their books, The Summoning God is based on real archaeological sites that tell a terrifying story of North America eight hundred years ago. Breathtaking descriptions evoke the harsh beauty of the desert, while the lucid, erudite historical perspectives are informed by the authors' own extensive archeological experience. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The moon had reached its maximum three times since the Chacoans conquered the First Moon People. The Chaco matrons had built their Great House high atop First Moon Mountain, and their warriors stalked arrogantly through the villages, taking what they pleased. But the gods can only stand so much human arrogance. Cold Bringing Woman, the goddess of winter, calls upon young Ripple to embark on a perilous quest to destroy the hated Chacoans. But Ripple will not face the task alone; he is aided by his stalwart friends: Wrapped Wrist, a short lothario; Spots, scarred at birth, and aide to the frightening witch, Nightshade; and Bad Cast, a simple family man, who will do anything to free his people. But the blessed matrons will brook no insurgency. In retaliation, war chief Leather Hand and his warriors embark on a campaign of terror so gruesome it remains unrivaled in the annals of prehistory. It all comes to a climax atop the mountain we now know as Chimney Rock. In the white light of the lunar maximum, the Pueblo gods will dance—and an empire will be engulfed in flames and mayhem. From New York Times and USA Today bestselling authors W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O'Neal Gear, People of the Moon is a story of North America's Forgotten Past—the battles fought, the heroes made, and the cultures that thrived in America's prehistory. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Encompassing nearly seven thousand acres amid the woodlands of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in northern New Mexico, the land that is now Pecos National Historical Park has witnessed thousands of years of cultural history stretching back to the Native peoples who long ago inhabited the pueblos of Pecos, then known as Cicuye. Once a trading center where Pueblo Indians, Spanish soldiers and settlers, and Plains Indians encountered one another, not always peacefully, Pecos was a stop on the Santa Fe Trail in the early 1800s and, later, on the first railroad in New Mexico. It was the site of a critical Civil War battle and in the twentieth century became a tourist destination. This book tells the story of how, over five centuries, cultures and peoples converged at Pecos and transformed its environment, ultimately shaping the landscape that greets park visitors today. Spanning the period from 1540, when Spaniards first arrived, into the twenty-first century, Crossroads of Change focuses on the history of the natural and historic resources Pecos National Historical Park now protects and interprets: the ruins of Pecos Pueblo and a Spanish mission church, a stage stop along the Santa Fe Trail, the Civil War battlefield of Glorieta Pass, a twentieth-century cattle ranch, and the national park itself. In an engaging style, authors Cori Knudten and Maren Bzdek detail the transformations of Pecos over time, often driven by the collision of different cultures, such as that between the Franciscan friars and Pecos Indians in the seventeenth century, and by the introduction of new animals, crops, and agricultural practices—but also by the natural forces of fire, drought, and erosion. Located on a natural trade route, Pecos has long served as a portal between different cultures and environments. Documenting this transformation over the ages, Crossroads of Change also, perhaps, shows us Pecos National Historical Park as a portal to the future.

This question-and-answer book contains 400 reminders of what is known and what is sometimes forgotten or misunderstood about a city that was founded more than 400 years ago. Not a traditional history book, this group of questions is presented in an apparently random order, and the answers occasionally meander off topic, as if part of a casual conversation.