The Great Taos Bank Robbery

Rating:
Summary: Deceptive Packaging
Review: I bet I'm not the only one who was fooled into thinking this book was a work of fiction. The cover art looks just like Hillerman's best selling novels. I liked the lead story, "The Great Taos Bank Robbery", but the rest were only mildly interesting. Not worth the price of admission.

Rating:
Summary: Deceptive Packaging
Review: I bet I'm not the only one who was fooled into thinking this book was a work of fiction. The cover art looks just like Hillerman's best selling novels. I liked the lead story, "The Great Taos Bank Robbery", but the rest were only mildly interesting. Not worth the price of admission.

Rating:
Summary: Get with Reality
Review: If you have spent ANY time in New Mexico (or a lifetime like me), there is a Favor & Life Style here that is Unique. With the Modern World slithering in & changing everything, this book is a Wonderful Testament to the way things used to be. If you are here for any length of time you may still experience some of the conditions & Personalities described, but like the Roswell Aliens, they can be difficult to find. If you have no sense of Humor, don't read this-try the daily paper.

Rating:
Summary: Get with Reality
Review: If you have spent ANY time in New Mexico (or a lifetime like me), there is a Favor & Life Style here that is Unique. With the Modern World slithering in & changing everything, this book is a Wonderful Testament to the way things used to be. If you are here for any length of time you may still experience some of the conditions & Personalities described, but like the Roswell Aliens, they can be difficult to find. If you have no sense of Humor, don't read this-try the daily paper.

Rating:
Summary: What New Mexico is really about
Review: Readers expecting Leaphorn and Chee will be disappointed -- but this is a wonderful book, a collection of essays from Hillerman's journalist days. He neatly skewers Indian-wannabes in "The Navajo Who Had So Many Friends ...," although "The Messenger Birds" and the piece on Mt. Taylor prove (as if we didn't know it already) that he's highly sensitive to the Native American point of view. And although the hilarious title story is mostly of historical interest in today's post-hippie Taos, it'll strike a responsive chord with anyone who's spent time in rural NM. The essay on Reies Tijerina elucidates the (still) sore point of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and its land-grant repercussions ... and yes, we do still have bubonic plague here, although in the era of antibiotics it's not the threat it was in medieval Europe. For someone who wants a sense of what New Mexico is REALLY all about, I recommend this as far and away the best book on the subject (a good runner-up is Stan Crawford's "Majordomo").