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Product Description
"Rio Grande is a fine representation of the human histories and lives that are entwined with this great river." —Southwest BookViews "In Rio Grande, Reid has assembled an intoxicating mix of prose, conveying the enchantment, struggle, and mystery of the river." —New Mexico Historical Review The liquid lifeline of an arid land, the Rio Grande has always been a vital presence in the American Southwest and Northern Mexico. A source of human sustenance for at least 15,000 years, the river has also been a site of conflict ever since exploring Spaniards first crossed its channel to colonize the Native Americans. Today, it is one of the frontiers in the war against terrorism in the Middle East. Yet the Rio Grande has a life independent of the people who use it as a border, or a hiding place, or an ever-diminishing source of irrigation water. This autonomous life of the river is what the writers and photographers included in this book seek to capture. Rio Grande explores the ecology, history, culture, and politicization of the river. Jan Reid has assembled writings by an astonishing array of leading authors—Larry McMurtry, Tony Hillerman, Paul Horgan, Charles Bowden, John Graves, Woody Guthrie, John Reed, John Nichols, Robert Boswell, James Carlos Blake, Elena Poniatowska, William Langewiesche, Molly Ivins, Dagoberto Gilb, and Gloria Anzaldúa, to name but a few—who ponder the river's historical and contemporary meanings through short stories, essays, newspaper and magazine articles, and excerpts from novels, histories, memoirs, and nonfiction reporting. Reid also adds his own reflections on the river, drawn from years of traveling the Rio Grande, talking to its people, and conducting archival research. In addition to the fine writing, historical and contemporary photographs by such well-known photographers as Laura Gilpin, Russell Lee, Robert Runyon, Bill Wittliff, W. D. Smithers, James Evans, Frank Armstrong, Ave Bonar, Earl Nottingham, and Alan Pogue create a stunning visual record of the stark beauty and elemental lifeways of the Rio Grande. As a whole, these voices and visions confirm the river's significance, not only as a real place, but even more as an object of the mythic imagination. (200509)
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
No country for old men . . ., 2008-10-13
This is a really fine book, immensely informative and also entertaining, handsomely designed and generously conceived. Jan Reid, himself a fine writer, has brought together a collection of fine writing on the subject of a big river, the Rio Grande. He follows the river from its source in the mountains of Colorado, through fertile valleys, desert, and roaring canyons to its turgid mouth on the Gulf of Mexico. While there are many words devoted to the many miles of landscape, Reid's primary interest is the social and political history that makes up the borderlands from El Paso to Brownsville. A region divided by a national border still contested by those who have lived and worked here for countless generations, Rio Grande country as it is characterized in Reid's book is both Texan and Mexican, with all the extremes that combination implies - no country for old men, you could say.
Given the world we live in, drugs and guns figure prominently along the river. Robert Draper tells of U.S. Marines stationed there to apprehend drug runners and the shooting of an 18-year-old boy herding goats. Don Ford recounts his experience as a cowboy smuggler of Mexican marijuana. Reid's own contribution (besides the lengthy and fascinating introductions to each section of the book) is an account of three armed Americans busting prisoners from a jail on the Mexican side of the border. And the Border Patrol is a constant dark presence, as in Elmer Kelton's "The Time It Never Rained."
There is humor, dry and otherwise, in Molly Ivins' report of a drunken mishap involving the mayor of Lajitas, who happens to be a goat. John Spong describes a loopy effort to build an exclusive resort with a luxurious golf course in the Big Bend. Gary Cartwright provides a sadly comic tour of his favorite haunts in Mexican border towns. Tom Miller describes the life of a parrot smuggler. We get an excerpt from John Nichol's humorous "Milagro Beanfield War." There's also a surprising visit by the young John Reed waiting in Presidio for the revolutionary army of Pancho Villa to reach Ojinaga, still in the hands of the federal army.
Meanwhile, the entire book is richly illustrated with period photographs, all of them in glorious black and white. This is a terrific book with hours of good reading for anyone interested in rivers and the mix of cultures and history that make up the borderlands between Texas and Mexico.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
A Start on an Account of a Unique River, 2005-07-27
Jan Reid has composed a unique anthology of writing on one of the two great southwestern rivers in his book "Rio Grande." Its main fault, if it has any, is that it is much too short. I could argue with the selections, but found them all of note and so would prefer more, rather than changing the ones Reid used in this book.
I grew up along the other great southwestern river, the Colorado. Both rivers originate in the Rocky Mountains and wind through canyons between mountains in the desert, one reaching the Gulf of California and the other the Gulf of Mexico. Both have fascinating geology, biota and human history. Reid is primarily concerned with the latter. From the beginning of the river in the San Juan Mountains in Colorado to its mouth (if you can call it that) between the border cities of Brownsville, Texas and Matamoros, Mexico, he brings us samples of fiction and non-fiction about the great Río de las Palmas, Río Bravo del Norte or, as we Norte Americanos know it, the Rio Grande (pronounced " Rio Gran" in much of Texas). Modern and relatively modern authors from John Nichols ("The Milagro Beanfield War") and Paul Horgan ("Great River") to Woody Guthrie ("Seeds of Man") and James Carlos Blake ("In the Rogue Blood") and older writings, such as John Reed's "Insurgent Mexico" (1914) and Robert T. Hill's "Running the Cañons of the Rio Grande" (1901), all cast their spell and the spell of the land through which the Rio Grande travels, even if it is sometimes not as nice as we would like it to be.
The most heart-rending chapter is "Ciudad de la Muerte" by Cecilia Balli. This chapter is about the three hundred women murdered in the border city of Juárez, over the last ten or so years. As I live only about 50 miles north of the border between El Paso, Texas, and Juárez, Chihuahua, I have some personal interest in these monstrous crimes. I am quite happy that we forbade our children to ever go across the border when they were in their teens, despite the fact that all of the victims so far have been Mexican and our kids were decidedly American. Also several teenagers who crossed the border (especially at night) have gotten into major trouble. I just don't trust the situation and Balli's essay really gets to the heart of that fear of the border city. Still, I have crossed the border on a number of occasions, but only a few times at Juárez.
Despite all this the border lands and the Rio Grande have a rich history and culture. Reid has caught this, but I still would like more. Where is La Llorona, the wailing woman, who morns the children she allowed to drown in the river or the Confederate invasion up the Rio Grande of New Mexico in 1861? Both center on the river and both have a lot of local color. Still, I guess it is better to be left asking for more than wishing you had not read the book in question!
I highly recommend this book for anyone wanting to gain some of the historical and literary flavor of this once great river, now polluted and tamed, squeezed, like the Colorado, of nearly every drop, before it finally reaches the salty waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
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