This guide to New Mexico's mountains provides information such as location, elevation and relief, ecosystems, archaeology, Native American presence, mining history, ghost towns, recreation, geology, ecology, and plants and animals.

Visually attractive with full color throughout, including dozens of large, vivid photographs, the book is intuitively designed to allow many different points of access, and appeal to a broad range of readers.

This unusual book is a complete account of the closely linked natural and human history of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of northern New Mexico, a region unique in its rich combination of ecological and cultural diversity.

New Mexico is a land with two faces. It is a land of enchantment, legendary for its natural beauty and rich cultural heritage. But it is also a land of paradox. In America, New Mexico, Robert Leonard Reid explores deep inside New Mexico's landscape to find the real New Mexico—with all of its gifts and challenges—within. Having traveled and hiked countless miles throughout the state, Reid knows New Mexico's breathtaking landscape intimately. But he knows the human landscape as well: its artists and poets, medicine men and businessmen, preachers and politicians, Hispanics and Anglos. He knows that amid the glittering mansions of Santa Fe there are homeless shelters, that the Indians of myth and legend combat alcoholism and poverty, and that toxic waste lurks beneath a land of almost surreal beauty. America, New Mexico is a book about land, sky, and hope by a writer whose passion and inspiring prose invite us to see the promise and possibilities of reconnecting with the natural world. It is unflinching in its depiction of the adversities facing New Mexicans and indeed all Americans. But above all, it searches behind and beyond these troubling issues to find, standing staunchly against them, a quiet and unshakable confidence rooted in New Mexico's natural world. For anyone who has ever been moved by the incomparable beauty of New Mexico, for anyone concerned with the landscape in which all Americans live, America, New Mexico is an unforgettable book.

A celebration--in words and pictures--of one of the most beautiful areas of the United States: the Taos Valley of northern New Mexico.