Magnificent Failure

In words that are as clean and precise as his haunting, starkly beautiful photographs (71 duotones, 10 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches), the author vividly recreates the life and times of the Western Homestead Era.

Booknews

Campbell (anthropologist U. of New Mexico) offers four essays and 70 of his own artistic photographs to document failed attempts to homestead the shortgrass prairie<-->dominated by the blue grama variety of buffalo grass<-->that comprises the southwesternmost reach of the Great Plains in New Mexico and Colorado. He does not provide an index. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

John Martin Campbell is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, and Research Professor and Research Curator of the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, at the University of New Mexico. In addition to his academic writing, he is the author of two other photographic works, Few and Far Between: Moments in the North American Desert and The Prairie Schoolhouse.