This book has 29 true short stories of people who lived in New Mexico, when it was a territory. Each story is about 2-5 pages long. There are some black and white pictures of these same people included in the book.

What a wonderful book. I particularly liked these were people who lived in New Mexico and that I could look at the pictures of each person as I read about them. This author has certainly done a lot of research. I have read a lot of New Mexico history and this book is gem. Many of the stories were ones that I had never heard before. Because the stories are short, it is easy to pick the book up for 15 or 20 minutes, read a story and put it down without losing your place. I appreciated the humor that Marc Simmons displays through out this book, many of these short stories end on a humorous note.

This is a great book about the people who lived in New Mexico when it was still being formed into a state. It certainly provides a history of New Mexico through a different slant. I enjoyed every minute of reading it. My husband read it and enjoyed it as well.

Don't count on AAA or Fodor's to guide you to the wagon wheel ruts, remnants of watering wholes, or Indian ambush points along the Santa Fe Trail. On one had I was pleased to see that the noted Santa Fe Trail historian had put together a guide to the location of the remnants of the trail. Unfortunately I found details lacking, particularly when it came to local observances and current road and off-road access to the location. I was particularly disappointed by the lack of detail for the Raton, NM area of the trail.

Now in a revised and updated third edition, Marc Simmons and Hal Jackson's Following The Santa Fe Trail: A Guide For Modern Travelers is written specifically to assist modern travelers who enjoy following the wagon tracks of pioneers. Following The Santa Fe Trail is packed with directions, maps, anecdotes, historical information, and everything else necessary to follow the trail of history. Now that the Santa Fe Trail has been designated a National Historic Trail under the National Park Service,it is bringing more public interest than ever to this fascinating pathway that transcends the generations. If the Santa Fe Trail perks your interest to, then Following The Santa Fe Trail is a must-read!

Marc Simmons is the pre-eminent author on Santa Fe Trail lore and this updated version of his "Following the Trail" is better than ever! He has captured those significant, visible elements of the SFT that make it impossible to follow the Trail without this book. The pictures and maps are explicit and easy to follow. His stories and anecdotes bring the Trail to life.
If you're an SFT buff be sure to also read his book: "The Old Santa Fe Trail", a collection of essays; and his new book: "Spanish Pathways" on the history of Hispanic New Mexico.
Jim Ryan

This elegant book with its 20-odd contributors from tiny villages on the Upper Pecos Valley is almost as attractive for the photos of the tellers, most in their 80's, as the meticulously transcribed Northern New Mexico dialect and excellent translations. The stories are commonly-told little morality tales and pieces of gossip that involve supernatural power, the intervention of the devil in our lives, or activities of local brujas. A chunk of American life that many of us cannot imagine actually exists.

Many have made their views of Onate and opinions clear here around New Mexico, but few have ever made even a slight reference to the men around Onate ... the time Onate lived in, but alas, Marc Simmons has a captivating impartial review of the infamous Onate.

It took two readings of this book for me to appreciate its value. Only the first half deals with a trek with Kit Carson. I expected more. Carson plays an important, but secondary, role in the story as a whole. The authors descriptions of New Mexico, Santa Fe, and the trail to Independence in 1868, after parting with Carson, acts as a supplemental piece to 'Wah to Yah' and other first person accounts of earlier Sante Fe Trail tales. His accounts of New Mexican priests is a perfect preface to Paul Horgan's 'Lamy of Santa Fe,' first Archbishop of Sante Fe, who was French. The author's style is flowery but vividly informative. It was better the second time around in my opinion, but worth the trip.

The subject of witchraft usually creates images associated with evil, a potent brew conjured in a cauldron, pins in a effigy and various other images dating way back in time. The author, Marc Simmons, known for his scholarly investigation into the culture surrounding New Mexcio and the southwest wrote this book in 1980 and continues to stand as one of the most concise books on the subject. Simmons begins his investigative narrative with a brief history of witchcraft prior to and including the Middle Ages and brings the subject into the Inqusition. The book centers on case histories, stories related down through generations, often no doubt embellished with color through time and in general one supernatural story after another. Some of the stories are extremely hard to believe for most of us who are conditioned by western thought. The book explores the role of the curranderos, shamen and medicine men, their means to achieve their goals and the power of prayer, invocations of saints names and the cross. There are plenty of stories of murder and mayhem," flying" witches, people changing into animals and more tales from the dark side.What is most interesting about his book is how the Indians themselves dealt with witches in their midsts and the resulting conflict with anglo culture that was based on perceptions steeped in (Catholic) Christianity. The case studies are all documented, as incredible as they are and the anthropological data is nothing short of amazing revelations into the conflicts of two worlds. The native inhabitants of the New World had beliefs of their own, much of which was destroyed but the surviving ethnohistorical documents reveal a pagan culture that was at complete odds with the Europeans who arrived from Spain. This is a fascinating look at a subject not often thought of in terms of witchcraft along the Rio Grande. If you like history, Indian belief systems and the role of religion for good and bad than this book is for you. Recommended for history buffs interested in the area of the southwest, specifically New Mexico and Arizona and the collision of two worlds.

When I saw this book in the shelves of a bookstore, I thought I should buy it immediately. But now I've finished its reading, I think I've should known better. It is a book at an introductory level, and this is said in the back cover, where it is also said that "the authors (...) avoid rigorous mathematical proofs and manipulations, preferring instead to concentrate on the information needed by hands-on cosmologists and astrophysicists." But they did not need, for example, to avoid giving explicitly the references from where they took the formulas they throw in the pages of the book. The lack of a really good bibliography at the end of the book is another problem, but not so big as the presence of several typographical mistakes, including errors in the formulas. However, to be fair this book can be useful to someone interested in learning something about the cosmological background radiation (CMB), probably not as a start for a serious study, but more as a light text showing some of the ideas behind the study of the CMB. For those in need of something more adequate for work on the subject, I suggest one review available on the web (xxx.lanl.gov), astro-ph 9904108, by Kamionkowski, M. and Kosowsky, A., with 423 references. And for those in search of a good textbook on the subject I ask them to tell me if they find it.