The underground world of con men, winos, prostitutes, laborers, and artists has been an abundant source of material for great writers from Dickens to Bukowski. The underground world of Taos, New Mexico, is no different. In the late 1950s this mountain town was higher, brighter, poorer, and farther removed than London, Paris, or Los Angeles, but it was every bit as rich for the explorations of a young writer. Max Evans, the beloved New Mexican writer of such enduring classics of Western fiction as The Rounders and The Hi-Lo Country, returns to form with The King of Taos. Set in the late 1950s, the novel tells the stories of sharp-witted Zacharias Chacon, aspiring artist Shaw Spencer, and a circle of characters who drink, fight, love, argue, and—mostly—talk. Readers will enjoy this witty and moving evocation of unforgettable characters as they look for work, love, comfort, dignity, and bottomless oblivion.

"In 2010, Santa Fe officially turns 400 - four centuries of a rich and contentious history of Indian, Spanish, and American interactions. Pueblo Indians settled along the banks of the Rio Santa Fe as long ago as the sixth century C.E. By 1610, Spanish colonists had established the town as a distant outpost in Spain's expanding empire. Drawing on recent archaeological discoveries and historical research, this updated edition of a classic history details the town's founding, its survival through revolt and reconquest, its turbulent politics, its lively trade with Mexico and the United States, and the lives of its most important citizens, from the governors Peralta, Vargas, and Armijo to the madam dona Tules. The origins and transformations of the very building blocks of Santa Fe, from the iconic Palace of the Governors to the city's acequia irrigation system, are revealed in these pages."--BOOK JACKET.

This remarkable book unfolds a detailed and thoughtful history beginning in 1598 and continuing through 1924. Chapters are devoted to events preceding the founding of the city; the Pueblo Revolution; the reconquest of the city by General Diego de Vargas; its 25 years as a Mexican provincial capital; the city during the military occupation period; and stories about Billy the Kid, Gov. Samuel B. Axtell, and the Santa Fe Ring.

In her second book on Galisteo, New Mexico, cultural historian Lucy R. Lippard writes about the place she has lived for a quarter century. The history of a place she refers to as Pueblo Chico (little town) is based largely on other people's memories--those of the descendants of the original settlers in the early 1800s, heirs of the Spanish colonizers and the indigenous colonized who courageously settled this isolated valley despite official neglect and threats of Indian raids. The memories of those who came later--Hispano and Anglo--also echo through this book. But too many lives have already receded into the land, and few remain to tell the stories. The land itself has the longest memory, harboring traces of towns, trails, agriculture, and other land use that goes back thousands of years. The Galisteo Basin is a cultural landscape that has become familiar to Lippard, simultaneously enriched with the stories she has been told by longtime residents and veiled by those she has not been told. From its inception, Galisteo has been about the vortex of land and lives, about the way the land reveals its coexistence with humans, the ways people have changed it, and the ways the land has in turn changed the people who lived here long enough to become part of it. Complementing the history are two hundred historical and contemporary images, many provided by Galisteo's citizens and heirs.