Hardcover. Albuquerque, University of New Mexico, 1st, 1971, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn, chipped dust jacket. 253 pages, INSCRIBED BY TAYLOR on the title page. Previous owner's inscription on half-title page, otherwise clean. First Mail West recounts the colorful history of stagecoach lines on the Santa Fe Trail during the height of overland traffic from 1850 to 1879. Desert, rain, snow, wind, outlaws, Indians, buffalo stampedes, and business competitors challenged, and sometimes scuttled, the operation of stage lines between Missouri and New Mexico. The author describes the topography, roads, rolling stock, stations, accommodations, and natural and human dangers along the trail, and analyzes the fierce competition between independent lines for passenger traffic and federal mail contracts.
Hardcover. Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 250 pages. b&w illustrations. The Progressive Era promoted a vision of America united by an emphasis on science and progressive reform. The zeal to modernize business, government and social relations extended to farm families and the ways women defined their roles. In this study of the expert advice offered by the domestic economy movement, Holt argues that women were not passive receptors of these views. Seeing their place in agriculture as multi-faceted and important, they eagerly accepted improved education and many modern appliances but often rejected suggestions conflicting with their own views of the rewards and values of farm life. Progressive reform inevitably left a mixed legacy; science and technology did not perfect rural society. But many programs such as 4-H and Master Homemaker still exist and are still shaped by women's desire to preserve and pass on the possibilities of rural life. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Harper & Row, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 230 pages. Translated from Spanish by Toby Talbot. Unclipped dust jacket with small crease on front flap, rubbing. Otherwise, clean and tight copy. A small gem of a novel, THE GODS, THE LITTLE GUYS AND THE POLICE won the Premio Casa de las Americas, the most prestigious literary prize offered for Latin American fiction, when it was originally published in Mexico. In this funny yet mordant satire of political terrorism in Argentina in the mid-1970s, a paramilitary death squad places the members of a poetry circle under surveillance. They include a bank clerk, a businessman and a pretty schoolteacher, as well as a cripple, a blind man and a former police informer, people as innocuous and apolitical as their verse. But having been denounced by a jealous wife of one of their members and betrayed by the informer, they have fallen prey to the violence and repression of Buenos Aires.
Softcover. NY, National Railway Publication Company, 1939, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, original printed paper wrappers, 1536 pages. Thick handbook for the railroad steamboat trade, with detailed schedules, maps, advertisements, all pertaining to the shipment of goods. Printed on thin, cheap stock that's tanning. Still very good wth clear tape reinforcement to spine.
Softcover. University of Pittsburgh Press, 1st pbk., 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 283 pages. George Grayson examines the influence of oil and the oil sector both within Mexican society and in its relations with other nations, as he traces the development of the oil industry from its beginnings in 1901 up until the 1980s. Clean copy.