Tom Miller takes readers on a wild tour of the American Southwest, focusing on people and places the casual tourist wouldn't find on their own. Miller is a natural storyteller whose familiarity with the Southwest (he's a Tucson resident and the author of Arizona: The Land and the People) enables him to speak with the ease of authority while tackling subjects as diverse as abandoned mining towns and velvet painting.

His prose drifts like sand across the Sonoran desert, and his phrases always contain the right balance of description, wit, and gravity. Miller is as comfortable ministering with rabbis in Arizona's prisons as he is trying to divine the intricacies of cockfighting. Miller's talent is most apparent in his discussions of the U.S./Mexico border. Having visited this territory in his acclaimed book On the Border, Miller is au fait with the complexities of the daily drama between Mexicans trying to immigrate into the U.S. and the border guards trying to repel them. But Miller's shining achievement is the oddly named title chapter, "Jack Ruby's Kitchen Sink." In it Miller writes of his own strange desire to own a piece of Jack Ruby memorabilia, and of the urges that compel southwesterners, and all Americans, to buy a piece of history. Jack Ruby's Kitchen Sink is a difficult book to characterize: It covers such a wide spectrum of topics and experiences. But this is often the quality possessed by the most notable travel books. While it may not contain a traditional narrative, the book is comprehensive, entertaining, and informative. Miller will take you into the heart of the Southwest and, through stories of people and places, stir up your longing to head into the sunset, and warm your imagination on a cold winter's night. --Emily Burg FROM THE PUBLISHER Embracing Arizona, New Mexico, and parts of California,Colorado, Texas, and northern Mexico, the Southwest remains something of an undiscovered country -- a land imprinted with the hardy spirit of recent pioneers, a Hispanic tradition stretching back more than 400 years, and a Native American culture that spans many hundreds more. Tom Miller, who moved to this unique region in the late 1960s, vividly evokes his Southwestern home with the keen eye and sharp wit that won him acclaim for The Panama Hat Trail and Trading with the Enemy: A Yankee Travels Through Castro's Cuba. Leaving the tourist trail of mock-adobe condos and souvenir Kachina dolls far behind, this wide- ranging chronicle reveals an extraordinary -- and authentic -- corner of the world. Miller's Southwest is a far cry from the studio of Georgia O'Keeffe. It's a place where black-velvet paintings are "handcrafted" on Tijuana assembly lines, the residents of dusty desert towns stage cockfights to pass the time, and northbound migrants and drug smugglers play games of cat-and-mouse, and life and death -- with the border patrol in parched arroyos. Miller takes us to a mountaintop fire tower to meet eco-militant Edward Abbey, whose incandescent writing sparked a new generation of environmental activists. He also witnesses ecotage in a midnight raid on a desert housing development, explores the turbulent history of mining-town labor struggles, and flirts with Sonia Braga during the filming of "Milagro Beanfield War." Hewing to his creed that there is no substitute for original research, Miller hunts down the origins and variants of the delicious chimichanga. As Miller wanders from a Texas auction where he nearly buys Jack Ruby's kitchen sink to the desert site where a saguaro cactus killed its gun-toting tormentor, it becomes clear that no other guide to the Southwest combines his moral vision and ability to have fun.

About The Author Tom Miller is the author of six previous books, among them Trading with the Enemy: A Yankee Travels Through Castro's Cuba,The Panama Hat Trail, and On the Border. He lives in Tucson, Arizona. Published at twenty four dollars.

 National Geographic Society 0-7922-7959-X / 9780792279594
Hardcover New Condition Washington, D.C. 

Price: 17.54 USD