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Smithsonian Guides to Historic America
The Smithsonian Guide to Historic America: The Desert States
Explores the historic treasures found in the Desert States, also includes historical paintings and engravings of the Southwest
445 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1990
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 12, 2022
Good comprehensive guide.
August 18, 2026
Book: 2/? • summer 2026
(in which I read a lot of books before I move out and descend into the corporate dronescape)
Overall: A guidebook so rich you feel as if you are going there yourself.
~
Picked this one up at a completely fantastic UCLA used book sale.
Incredibly edited, with every sentence perfectly concise. No fact overstays its welcome. Beyond the required contact details and opening hours (because this was a guidebook after all), very few menial details remain.
For places that I would ordinarily skim through, care was taken to include only the most fascinating tidbits, which also helped the places to stick in your head and not blend together whatsoever. Just off the top of my head: the mining town of Jerome in Arizona was constantly sliding down the mountainside and at one point had a building that slid 225ft downhill. One local anecdote was that someone could light their cigar on their neighbor’s chimney. Another: Mark Twain first used his pseudonym while writing for the newspaper in Virginia City, which was a big deal during the “bonanzas” of the late 1800s. The city may have been named after the whisky that the founder was drinking on a particular night. I also found the tour of Mormon HQ to be interesting. If a bit kind toward the Mormons, probably owing to whatever people they were interviewing while composing this work, the guidebook was sure to emphasize the quirks, like polygamous architecture whenever Brigham Young had multiple houses for his wives, etc.
This book is just a gold mine for incredible fun facts. It has completely changed my relationship with not only this region (which I had very little knowledge of ahead of time) but also this genre of higher-end guidebooks. I already purchased the Carolinas and Capital region installments in this series, for instance. I have felt my tastes drifting further into nonfiction since mid-undergrad, but I do feel like anyone would enjoy this book if they have the patience to stick with it.
Repeated instances of information help both types of readers of this book: the continuous and spot-reader. They never felt redundant, always reworded to feel fresh or offer a new detail.
The book was printed in Japan in the 1990s (Toppan Printing), and the pictures were completely stunning and brought the text to life. Always fascinating and demonstrative of the perfect item that I was wondering about.
I had admittedly low working knowledge of indigenous Americans in the region, and this book certainly included a survey of many important sites to groups like the Navajo, Hopi, Apache, and several others. A minority of the time, the significance of a native site was not fully explained, but I am unsure if that was because of a lack of historical knowledge of the site or neglecting to read or ask enough from indigenous perspectives. I do lean more toward the first explanation, as anecdotes and tidbits from indigenous cosmology were featured quite frequently whenever relevant, and I want to believe in the strength of this work.
The trauma inflicted in Indian boarding schools was not focused on at all, despite some boarding schools being mentioned. I believe many of those facts have only come into the Anglo-American zeitgeist in the previous few years, aided by excavations of burial sites (NPR, WaPo, Reuters). This may be rectified by the revised & updated version in 1998, or any future versions.
~
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(in which I read a lot of books before I move out and descend into the corporate dronescape)
Overall: A guidebook so rich you feel as if you are going there yourself.
~
Picked this one up at a completely fantastic UCLA used book sale.
Incredibly edited, with every sentence perfectly concise. No fact overstays its welcome. Beyond the required contact details and opening hours (because this was a guidebook after all), very few menial details remain.
For places that I would ordinarily skim through, care was taken to include only the most fascinating tidbits, which also helped the places to stick in your head and not blend together whatsoever. Just off the top of my head: the mining town of Jerome in Arizona was constantly sliding down the mountainside and at one point had a building that slid 225ft downhill. One local anecdote was that someone could light their cigar on their neighbor’s chimney. Another: Mark Twain first used his pseudonym while writing for the newspaper in Virginia City, which was a big deal during the “bonanzas” of the late 1800s. The city may have been named after the whisky that the founder was drinking on a particular night. I also found the tour of Mormon HQ to be interesting. If a bit kind toward the Mormons, probably owing to whatever people they were interviewing while composing this work, the guidebook was sure to emphasize the quirks, like polygamous architecture whenever Brigham Young had multiple houses for his wives, etc.
This book is just a gold mine for incredible fun facts. It has completely changed my relationship with not only this region (which I had very little knowledge of ahead of time) but also this genre of higher-end guidebooks. I already purchased the Carolinas and Capital region installments in this series, for instance. I have felt my tastes drifting further into nonfiction since mid-undergrad, but I do feel like anyone would enjoy this book if they have the patience to stick with it.
Repeated instances of information help both types of readers of this book: the continuous and spot-reader. They never felt redundant, always reworded to feel fresh or offer a new detail.
The book was printed in Japan in the 1990s (Toppan Printing), and the pictures were completely stunning and brought the text to life. Always fascinating and demonstrative of the perfect item that I was wondering about.
I had admittedly low working knowledge of indigenous Americans in the region, and this book certainly included a survey of many important sites to groups like the Navajo, Hopi, Apache, and several others. A minority of the time, the significance of a native site was not fully explained, but I am unsure if that was because of a lack of historical knowledge of the site or neglecting to read or ask enough from indigenous perspectives. I do lean more toward the first explanation, as anecdotes and tidbits from indigenous cosmology were featured quite frequently whenever relevant, and I want to believe in the strength of this work.
The trauma inflicted in Indian boarding schools was not focused on at all, despite some boarding schools being mentioned. I believe many of those facts have only come into the Anglo-American zeitgeist in the previous few years, aided by excavations of burial sites (NPR, WaPo, Reuters). This may be rectified by the revised & updated version in 1998, or any future versions.
~
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June 5, 2019
A good book for a short synopsis of important towns/places in the region.
April 29, 2012
All the Smithsonian Guides are great for general history of an area. This one is true to form, great information and pictures.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews