Customer Reviews

Mesa Verde National Park: Life Earth Sky

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The book was reasonably priced. It was shipped promptly and arrived undamaged. Both the text and pictures were very informative. I am planning a sightseeing trip to Colorado and doing research to determine which places I want to visit. I will definitely visit Mesa Verde National Park and the book will be extremely valuable in helping me decide which dwellings at the park I want to visit.

This kind of large-format, sumptuously illustrated book would more often be purchased in a gift shop onsite rather than online, and indeed at Mesa Verde this book is available for sale together with a large amount of other site-related merchandise in the very well-stocked and excellent information center.

The author, Susan Lamb, is an Arizona-based academic expert and freelance writer on the ancient Puebloan cultures of the South West. She knows her stuff and writes well, with enough detail about the site and its history for the interested reader interspersed with personal anecdotes and stories which lighten up the narrative. It makes for easy reading, but manages to be at the same time genuinely informative.

The book is published by California-based Sierra Press, who since their 1985 foundation have specialised in high quality photographic material about America's National Parks - frequently cited as "America's greatest idea." The photo-image quality in this book is outstanding, with full-page rich color plates of all the main places of interest at the Mesa Verde site (there's a lot, and they are spread out over a wide area), plenty of well-drawn full-color maps of the area and of the distribution of Pueblo artefacts in the wider region, plus a few older monochrome images of the Wetherills and other archaeologists who contributed to early knowledge about this extraordinary location and helped bring it to wider public attention.

If you've never visited Mesa Verde and are planning to, a couple of cautions might be in order. The site is accessible only from the main highway in southern Colorado, and you will need a good head for heights to drive the 20 miles or so up the precipitous road to the Mesa secreted away high in the mountains. The scenery is utterly spectacular and like few places on Earth: parts of the Himalayas or the Andes might compete, but few other locations. Some of the ancient villages are cut out of sheer sandstone rock-face, and again require a good head for heights when descending or climbing out on the wooden ladders - not for the faint-hearted. America does National Parks well: the Mesa Verde site is enormous, tastefully designed, well-served with visitor facilities, superbly managed and sensitively policed (warning: don't even think about violating the very low speed limits!). The ranger-guiding services are excellent. There were large forest fires in southern CO in recent years and by 2010 most areas had not recovered, with hillsides covered with thousands of dead, ashen-grey trees.

At 48 pages "Life Earth Sky" is a good illustrated introduction to Mesa Verde and a tastefully produced, colorful coffee-table book. At US$12.95 it's good value online: at the site, it will cost you US$17. It's worth a quality hardback edition, but unfortunately only the paperback edition is available.