Larger Than Life

'Larger than Life' offers eleven essays that touch on a variety of southwestern themes. One section highlights three people who have dramatically shaped the region's history. Pilot Charles A Lindbergh, who helped turn New Mexico into a regional centre for aviation and rocketry during the interwar years. Physicist J Robert Oppenheimer, who believed that New Mexico had restored him to health in the 1920s, and, as a consequence, chose Los Alamos as the site for the nation's top secret weapons laboratory in 1942. And, first-term congressman Bill Richardson (currently governor), who inaugurated his skills at compromise by resolving a bitter environmental dispute in 1984 - skills that he would later utilise on the international stage. Other essays explore the cultural appeal of the Land of Enchantment from 1945 to the present, as well as the horrific ammunition explosion that virtually wiped the hamlet of Tolar, New Mexico, off the map in 1944. A final section deals with several Southwestern 'mysteries', including the tale of an itinerant German immigrant who, in 1895, allegedly healed more than 5,000 people simply by touching them; and the collapse of Chaco Canyon's Threatening Rock - a 30,000-ton wall of sandstone that had threatened to destroy the structures of Pueblo Bonito for over two millennia.

ISBN 0826338836   Pages 298 ISBN13 9780826338839 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher University of New Mexico Press   Weight (grammes) 531 Imprint University of New Mexico Press   Published in Albuquerque, NM Format Paperback   Height (mm) 230 Publication date 15 Apr 2006   Width (mm) 155 Library of Congress 2005027464   Spine width (mm) 24 DEWEY 978.9053   Academic level General DEWEY edition DC22

Ch. 1		Charles A. and Anne Morrow Lindbergh and the shaping of New Mexican history		7
Ch. 2		J. Robert Oppenheimer and the state of New Mexico : a reciprocal relationship		25
Ch. 3		Congressman Bill Richardson and the 1984 creation of the Bisti and De-Na-Zin wilderness areas in Northern New Mexico		50
Ch. 4		The cultures of modern New Mexico, 1940 to the early twenty-first century		71
Ch. 5		Cutting the Gordian Knot : how Leslie R. Groves and Norris Bradbury made the Los Alamos scientific laboratory permanent, 1945-48		125
Ch. 6		New Mexico's forgotten nuclear tests : projects Gnome (1964) and Gasbuggy (1967)		151
Ch. 7		The history of atomic photography		175
Ch. 8		Francis Schlatter : the spiritual healer of the southwest		199
Ch. 9		The Tolar, New Mexico, munitions train explosion, November 30, 1944		215
Ch. 10		The saga of Chaco Canyon's "threatening Rock," ca. 550 B.C.E.-January 22, 1944		224

"[Szasz] deeply comprehends the spiritual and creative fluorescence that has evolved in New Mexico over the last hundred years...fascinating from the first to last page.

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