Arizona: The Beauty of It All, Second Edition updates Arizona Highways' popular first-edition coffee table book (originally published in 1996). Featuring more than 60 photographs, as well written work from some the magazines most prominent essayists "€" Charles Bowden and Craig Childs among them "€" The Beauty of It All celebrates Arizona's forests, canyons, water, rocks and mountains. The book is geared toward photography and Arizona enthusiasts.

Nearly every life form found among North American flowering plants is represented in Arizona. This amazing diversity is partly explained by the fact that the altitudinal range extends from a few feet above sea level to approximately 12,000 feet at the summit of the San Francisco Peaks. The life zone range from Arctic-Alpine on these peaks to Lower Sonoran in the southwest and Subtropical in the extreme south. The main objective of this book is to provide means for identifying the approximately 3438 species of flowering plants, ferns, and fern-allies growing without cultivation in Arizona. Keys for identification of the families, genera, and species are provided. Under each species the authors give the geographical distribution within and outside Arizona, and usually the altitudinal range and time of flowering. They describe economic uses, toxic or other properties, and ornamental value of many plants, giving particular attention to the utilization of native plants by the large Indian population of the state. Introductory chapters describe the topography, geology, soils, and climate of Arizona, the several types of vegetation in relation to the physical conditions, and the proportional representation of the larger plant families. There is also a brief account of botanical explorations in Arizona since 1832. This is the only available work on the flora of Arizona that includes the results of intensive, botanical research in the state during the past twenty years. It is based on an earlier publication, Flowering Plants and Ferns of Arizona, issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1942 and now out of print. For the present revision, a supplementary section of more than fifty pages has been prepared under the direction of John Thomas Howell and Elizabeth McClintock of the California Academy of Sciences. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1960.

From north to south and east to west, writer Sam Negri and Arizona Highways' best photographers capture for you the beauty of Arizona's incredibly varied landscapes. 66 full-color photographs.

Combining poetic language and the traditions of magic realism to paint a vivid portrait of her family, Pat Mora’s House of Houses is an unconventional memoir that reads as if every member, death notwithstanding, is in one room talking, laughing, and crying. In a salute to the Day of the Dead, the story begins with a visit to the cemetery in which all of her deceased relatives come alive to share stories of the family, literally bringing the food to their own funerals. From there the book covers a year in the life of her clan, revealing the personalities and events that Mora herself so desperately yearns to know and understand.

The Río Mayo region of northwestern Mexico is a major geographic area whose natural history remains poorly known to outsiders. Lying in a region where desert and tropical, northern and southern, and continental and coastal species converge, it boasts an abundance of flora first documented by Howard Scott Gentry in 1942 in a book now widely regarded as a classic of botanical literature. This new book updates and amends Gentry's Río Mayo Plants. Undertaken with Gentry's support and participation before his death in 1993, it reproduces the original text, which appears here with annotations, and contains information on over 2,800 taxa—more than twice the 1,200 species first described by Gentry. The annotated list of plants includes information on distribution, habitat, appearance, common names, and indigenous uses. A new introduction provides historical background and a review of geography and vegetation. It also describes changes to the land and river wrought by agricultural development, expanded grazing, and lumbering. Throughout the text, the authors have endeavored to provide information on Río Mayo vegetation while emphasizing local knowledge and use of plants, to preserve Gentry's field-oriented focus, and to present botanical information with Gentry's exuberance and style. Río Mayo Plants has long stood as a book that displays a scientist's love of the English language, his fondness for native peoples, and his eye for beauty in nature. This updating of that work fills a gap in the botanical literature of this portion of North America and will be useful not only for botanists but also for biogeographers, taxonomists, land managers, and conservationists.

Thomas E. Sheridan has spent a lifetime in Arizona, "living off it and seeking refuge from it." He knows firsthand its canyons, forests, and deserts; he has seen its cities exploding with new growth; and, like many other people, he sometimes fears for its future. In this book, Sheridan sets forth new ideas about what a history should be. Arizona: A History explores the ways in which Native Americans, Hispanics, and Anglos have inhabited and exploited Arizona from the pursuit of the Naco mammoth 11,000 years ago to the financial adventurism of Charles Keating and others today. It also examines how perceptions of Arizona have changed, creating new constituencies of tourists, environmentalists, and outside business interests to challenge the dominance of ranchers, mining companies, and farmers who used to control the state. Sheridan emphasizes the crucial role of the federal government in Arizona's development throughout the book. As Sheridan writes about the past, his eyes are on the inevitable change and compromise of the present and future. He balances the gains and losses as global forces interact more and more with local cultural and environmental factors.

It rises suddenly out of the Sonoran Desert landscape, towering over the tallest tree or cactus, a commanding building with a sensuous dome, elliptical vaults, and sturdy bell towers. There is nothing else like it around, nor does it seem there should be. This incongruity of setting is what strikes first-time visitors to Mission San Xavier del Bac. This great church is of another place and another time, while its beauty is universal and timeless. Mission San Xavier del Bac is a two-century-old Spanish church in southern Arizona located just a few miles from downtown Tucson, a metropolis of more than half a million people in the American Southwest. A National Historic Landmark since 1963, the mission’s graceful baroque art and architecture have drawn visitors from all over the world. Now Bernard Fontana—the leading expert on San Xavier—and award-winning photographer Edward McCain team up to bring us a comprehensive view of the mission as we’ve never seen it before. With 200 stunning full-color photographs and incisive text illuminating the religious, historical, and motivational context of these images, A Gift of Angels is a must-have for tourists, scholars, and other visitors to San Xavier. From its glorious architecture all the way down to the finest details of its art, Mission San Xavier del Bac is indeed a gift of angels.