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In a town that straddles the border of Mexico and Arizona, Alberto Ríos explains the world not through reason but magic. Carving poems from fable, parable, and family legend, Ríos utilizes the intense and supple imagination of childhood to find and preserve history beyond facts: plastic lemons turning into baseballs, a grandmother's long hair reaching up to save her life. ... Read more

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Unsure about poetry?
These story-like poems poems are accessible to the uninitiated."Mason Jars by the Window" last line is devastating. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

Mulling over an ordinary life with grace and dignity
Alberto Rios, the poet laureate of Arizona, manages to makes the most mundane aspects of living a flowing poetic journey.In THE THEATER OF NIGHT Rios shares the life of Clemente and Ventura, a couple living in the first half of the 20th Century along the US/Mexico border and in relating this simple 'life' he causes us to re-examine all of the prejudices and mounting ill-feelings that now surround the borderline between two countries.For that reason alone it is worth reading his words.

But Rios is not preaching or soapboxing here.He is merely in the simplest of terms relating the courting, love, and family building between two lovely people - and that is enough to pull our attention away from differences to similarities.In 'Explaining a Husband' Rios writes:

'We're like that, I think, he and I, that husband of mine.
We're like that now, even if we didn't start that way.
We used to love each other.
But now it's something else, something more.
We know each other's life. And when we talk,
We are each other's story.'

Rios is not profound to the first glance reader, nor does he purport to be.Yet it is in his simplicity of thought and communication that the profundity of his thoughts emerges.His gift is in exploring the familiar and therein finding the magic that glows form all of our lives.Grady Harp, December 06
... Read more

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A troubled young woman in the throes of the American Civil War, tries coming to terms with her conscience when a death-wish aimed at her abusive husband comes to pass. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A story to touch your heart.
" A Death for Beauty", takes you into the deeply troubled life of Virginia Mae Mercy, who is living during the Civil War. When her husband, Birdie is killed Virginia is certain that his death was divine justice from God. After the giving birth to twin boys, one that is stillborn and the other who dies shortly after birth, she is convinced that she to is being punished for the numerous sins that she has committed. She is further convinced each time she looks at her only surviving child, a disabled girl named Triste. Virginia deceides to leave her mother, her home, and the stigma attached to her and her daughter and move to Idaho. Traveling with an unscrupulous man named Clayton Fraquhar, his wife Sissy, and Reverend Thorpe, they are unaware of the many dangers that await them on this long hard journey. Soon they find themselves surrounded by wild Indians and with no way to escape they find themselves held captive. With their traveling companions being murdered one by one Virginia sees an opportunity for Triste to escape. Although she sends her daughter to what she thinks is safety she is uanable to escape. Virginia soon finds herself belonging to the Indian chief Ottawa she also finds out that they have murdered her only child Triste. Constantly in a state of praying, plotting, and planning her escape she makes friends with an Indian named White Tipi, and together enlists the help of the army to aid in her escape. Will Virginia be able to find safety and return home or will she succumb to the beauty that she feels death holds?


"A Death for Beauty", offers the reader the perfect blend of history and fiction. Drawing inspiration from the real-life account of Fanny Kelly and her captivity by Indians, Alberto Rios Arias breaths life into the fictional character of Virginia Mae Mercy. Methodically researching each and every aspect of this touching story including the Lakota language, Alberto Rios Arias takes you into the heart of the story. Baring the heart and soul of Virginia Mae Mercy as she struggles to survive and find meaning for her life. "A Death for Beauty", is guaranteed to touch your heart and stir the soul. Truly a book that should be on the top of everyone's must read stack.

A MUST READ......A DEATH FOR BEAUTY
It is not often that I read a novel that I would personally consider to be a masterpiece.Alberto Rios Arias has done just that with A Death For Beauty.Making no apologizes for the character and lifestyle ofVirginia Mae Mercy, her story is laid bare before the reader.Love her or hate her, you will definitely be moved by the story of her life.

Filled with rich imagery, I was totally enthralled through the whole story, laughing on some occasions, and actually weeping in others.The depth of the author's study and research of the particular time framein American history is without equal.I found the situations and characters to be true to life, and no effort was made to "sanitize" or make allowances for the characters and their failings.

Life hands some of us some truly horrendous circumstances, and good or bad, we are shaped by them.I found Mr. Arias' ability to see into his character and bring her to life to be extraordinary.

There is a truly magical and redemptive quality to the novel.Ifound the actual autobiographical information about the author and his fight with Marfan's Syndrome to add an additional depth to the story, and I felt the personal journey of his own life added even more depth and character to his perception of Virginia Mae Mercy.I urge all readers to carefully and thoroughly read both the prologue of the story, and the additional information about the author.

Some readers will find this a difficult read, and in some cases, it is.However, you will find yourself moved and touched by the character of Virginia Mae Mercy in ways you can't truly understand until you read her story.

I strongly urge you read this book.It may very well change how you view certain aspects of life, hardship and death.

... Read more

Product Description
First published in 1984, this award-winning book,considered a classic of Chicano fiction, is now available only fromthe University of New Mexico Press. ... Read more

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Great stories that truly show the bi-cultural perspective
In Iguana Killer there are several stories of young boys and the growing up they have to do usually without too much financial security and the constant challenges that they meet in a bilingual as well as a bi-culturalsetting. Rios has a gift for interpreting what goes on in young boys minds,and the stories themselves make for very good reading. ... Read more

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Capirotada, Mexican bread pudding, is a mysteriousmixture of prunes, peanuts, white bread, raisins, milk, quesadillacheese, butter, cinnamon and cloves, Old World sugar, "allthis," writes Alberto Rios, "and things people will not tellyou."

Like its Mexican namesake, this memoir is a rich melange, stirringtogether Rios's memories of family, neighbors, friends, and secretsfrom his youth in the two Nogaleses' in Arizona and through the opengate into Mexico.

The vignettes in this memoir are not loud or fast. Yet like all ofRios's writing they are singular. Here is the story about a ricketymagician, his chicken, and a group of little boys, but who plays atrick on whom? The story about the flying dancers and mortality. Aboutgoing to the dentist in Mexico because it is cheaper, and maybedangerous. About a British woman who sets out on a ship for Americawith the faith her Mexican GI will be waiting for her in Salt LakeCity. And about the grown son who looks at his father and understandshow he must provide for his own boy.

This book's uncommon offering is how it stops to address the quiet,the overlooked, the every day side of growing up. Capirotada is notabout prison, or famous heroes. It is instead about the middle, whichis often the most interesting place to find news. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

A good example of a person who wants to write a book but doesn't have anything to write about
I have read this whole book and i can say that honestly the point of this book still alludes me i dont understand what drove him to write this book honestly his childhood stories witch made up the majority of this book bored me to tears they werent unique and had no merit to be put in a book. Im from arizona and i hate it when people talk about opening the boarder which is what the author likes to suddely put into the book, but it would have been so much more interesting if he had stayed on a subject like this. Instead he likes to jump from one childhood story to another going from age 15 to 4 to 20 to 12 etc. its really confusing. Personaly i think any book can be gleened for information of some kind but this book i think breaks that theory their is honestly no reason to read this book. Here ill sum up the point a little better(something this author should have done). Number one this book is horribly written it jumps from one point to another and he doesnt talk about how arizona is a caripotada(FYI i dont like my state being compared to food) which was his his main point enough in fact i dont think he says that until around page 80. Number 2 my main point is that he really didnt have a reason to write this in his life he never did anything extraordinary this is a lot like if some random guy decided to write a book about himself( which is what he did) he did nothing in his life to make it interesting its so annoying for me to i honestly do not understand what drove him to write this. My grandfather wrote a book to but at least he knew not to waste his time and publish it he just gave it to family members which is what this man should have done. Im sorry if you liked this but honestly the two problems are poor writing and NOTHING INTERESTING ABOUT IT THEIRS NO REASON FOR HIM TO HAVE WRITEN THIS BOOK.

Very very boring
I read this book because of One Book Arizona's sponsorship. It was boring beyond words, and I can't imagine why it won the One Book award. The people who voted must have been students of the author because this was not a good book.

MOST ENCHANTING ACCOUNT OF GROWING UP IN A MULTI- HUED PLACE
Sometimes you just want to read something that warms your heart.Something that is so rich and abundant with kindliness and warmth that you have to pause several times in your reading to ponder and absorb.Theauthor must have been a very "nice boy."A nice boy with kaleidoscopevision and compassion.

Nothing fancy.Just plain home-cooking, albeitsometimes spicy, like the chilaquilas recipe in the book, which incidently,is wonderful!

My Childhood Town
I have never read a book about my hometown. This book took me back to my childhood days, and what it meant to grow up in a border town where everyone knew each other, everyone was friendly, there was no racism andyou could sleep with the door unlocked, leave your keys in the car and itwas safe.It also brought sadness at the same time, since Nogales is notthe same Nogales of the fifties, sixties, seventies and even part of theeighties.It has grown extensively, has crime, and is no longer the littlefriendly town I once knew and loved.

Albert was at Nogales High School atthe same time as I. He has truly written a BEAUTIFUL memoir of what mylittle childhood town was.I knew his family, his father married my husbandand I and his mom pierced my ears. I was saddened by the fact that hisfather had passed away,(since we moved to culture shock California 10 yearsago,I don't have much contact with Nogalians). But, believe me,you don'thave to be from Nogales to enjoy this little marvel of a book. ... Read more

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second printing of Walt Whitman Award Winner 1981 ... Read more

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The book describes a general vision of the miniaturization of the analytical systems, including their principles, designs and applications. Through ten chapters the different aspects characterizing the miniaturized systems are developed. Thus, the two first chapters include the basic concepts behind miniaturization in analytical chemistry, as well as the mechanical and electronic tools needed for designing and fabricating miniaturized analytical systems.  Chapters 3 to 6 represent the core of the book, as they take as the basis the analytical process and deal with the miniaturization of sample treatment (including the consequent automation), with sections devoted to the problems associated with sample introduction in micro(nano) systems; miniaturized systems for analyte separation, depending of the forces involved in moving the flow; and detection in micro-size environments. Following on, Chapters 7 and 8 will deal with the miniaturization of the entire process: from sample introduction to the generation of the corresponding analytical results. The last part of the book will deal with two aspects of miniaturized analytical systems directly connected to their usefulness: the design of portable miniaturized systems (interesting for performing field tests) and how to assure the practical reliability of the micro(nano) systems (quality control tests, performance and validation activities, as well as the robustness of the miniaturized depicted systems. The ruggedness of micro(nano) systems are  briefly discussed and related to the tools for designing and fabricating described in the first chapters of the book. ... Read more

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"Boldly playful, gymnastic and surreal."—Leslie Ullman, Kenyon Review ... Read more

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From the middle of the twentieth century comes the latest collection of stories by renowned Chicano writer Alberto Alvaro Rios. The Curtain of Trees re-creates a time and place largely forgotten these days except by grandparents and elders. The stories in this book are part folklore, part oral history, but in full measure literary as they recollect family tales modified by time, telling, and now Ros's graceful perspective.

Set along the Arizona-Mexico border, these stories engage the gulf between Mexican and Chicano, aunt and nephew, sister and sister, sanity and madness. Sometimes the gulf cannot be spanned; sometimes it is nonexistent. The stories are about a land untouched by modernity, where the town crier dresses up as a bear to spread the news, where everybody takes care of the wandering boy named Gustavo, where family lineage means hospitable passage through a distant town.

Like so many family stories told on long afternoons, the tales in The Curtain of Trees are authentic, touching, and fantastically unbelievable. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A writer of consumate skills
War came to the Arizona border in the late 1920s, and Americans could sit on the hills and watch the bombing and shooting in the Mexican half of Ambos Nogales.

Rios was there, a five-year-old in Sonora, one of those who huddled behind a stove when the bombing began.In those days Nogales was small and unimportant, not the massive 'maquiladora' and 'narcotrafficante' city of today. In those days it was neighbourly where "We were related to everybody, and everybody was related to us."

It was a time before technology and computers and cell phones and television;the rich had 'Cafe Combate' coffee.His mother made 'Caracolillo' by carefully roasting pea beans in a pan on the stove, coating them with sugar so they wouldn't burn and would acquire a chicory flavour:"The fire and the beans and the sugar and the grinding--it all had a loud and happy smell that could not be ignored.It was as if the coffee had hands, which it would put around our faces and try to draw us to its chest.They were strong hands and would not give up.Even after the coffee was made, the hands came up out of it as steam, and they still tried to wave us over."

The "war" was the dying embers of the Revolucion of 1910, embers of which flickered weakly until the 1940s.But this isn't a book about war;instead, it's about a small boy who changed as Mexico slowly evolved from peons to professionals and the world changed from simplicity to complexity and change.

Rios offers a fond remembrance of this lost world of the innocence of a young boy.His writing is artistry in words, his stories have a comfortable elegaqnce because they are so long past.Traces of that life can sometimes still be found in some small and remote villages.Today most towns and cities in Mexico, as in the U.S., have matured into violence and anonymity.Rios writes of a time of innocence a nd trust that is now only a fond distant memory.

Day-to-day lives are different in various lands, but basic memories are often similar.I remember similar quiet idylls of little towns from Orillia in Canada to Ringstedt in Germany to Desemboque in Mexico.Feelings and attitudes are much the same in these quiet safe havens of the past.There is an unspoken brotherhood of small towns which Rios evokes with introspection and deft charm.

This is less of a book about Mexico than the wistful recollections of a small town in a simpler era.Rios offers some sunshine sketches of a Mayberry in Mexico.


... Read more

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This book presents a radical rereading of Alberto Gerchunoff's classic Argentinian immigrant saga, Los gauchos judíos (The Jewish Gauchos; 1910). This collection of stories about early twentieth-century agricultural colonial colonies founded by persecuted Eastern Europeans Jews on the pampa has been both praised as Argentine xenophobia. In this new study, Aizenberg reassesses the linguistic and ideological importance of Gerchunoff's book. She highlights the significant variations between Gerchunoff's original 1910 text and his 1936 revised edition and unearths a new, more ethnically and linguistically aware side to Gerchunoff. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from World Literature Today, published by University of Oklahoma on July 1, 2003. The length of the article is 2896 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The edge in the middle: an interview with Alberto Rios.(Interview)
Author: Leslie A. Wootten
Publication: World Literature Today (Refereed)
Date: July 1, 2003
Publisher: University of Oklahoma
Volume: 77Issue: 2Page: 57(4)

Article Type: Interview

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Chapters: Bennie Gonzales, Christine Mcintyre, Andrew Leo Bettwy, Alberto Ríos, Bob Baffert, Danny Villa, Alex Flanagan. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 34. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Bennie M. Gonzales, FAIA (June 11, 1924 November 20, 2008) was an American architect known for a distinctive style of Southwestern architecture which has since been widely copied. Gonzales designed most of Scottsdale, Arizona's, major municipal buildings including Scottsdale City Hall, the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts and the Civic Center Library. His resume also included hundreds of private homes and residences throughout Arizona. Examples of Gonzales's work can be found sprinkled across Arizona, the United States and the world. High profile buildings designed by Gonzales include the Heard Museum in central Phoenix; the Cotton Hotel in Phoenix; the former Armour-Dial building on Scottsdale Road in Scottsdale; and two churches located in Paradise Valley, Arizona, the Gloria Del Lutheran Church and the Christ Church of the Ascension. Gonzales received 131 separate architectural design awards throughout his career, including several awards from the American Institute of Architects. He was born Barnaby Gonzales in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1924. As a child, Gonzales worked at his uncle's adobe brick factory, which produced building materials for the famed Arizona Biltmore Hotel. He first saw architect Frank Lloyd Wright at the hotel when he was just 8 years old. The brief sighting of Wright made an impression on the young Gonzales, who decided to pursue a career in architecture. Gonzales attended Phoenix Union High School. He enlisted in the United States Coast Guard during World War II. It was during his time in the Coast Guard that he earned the nickname "Bennie" when a military recrui...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=20875436 ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Montalbán, published by Thomson Gale on January 1, 2004. The length of the article is 2055 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Donis Rios, Manuel Alberto. 2001. El territorio de Venezuela: documentos para su estudio.(Reseña de libro)
Author: Claudio Alberto Briceño Monzón
Publication: Montalbán (Magazine/Journal)
Date: January 1, 2004
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Issue: 37Page: 278(4)

Article Type: Reseña de libro

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from World Literature Today, published by University of Oklahoma on July 1, 2003. The length of the article is 490 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Alberto Rios. The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body.(Book Review)
Author: Robert Murray Davis
Publication: World Literature Today (Refereed)
Date: July 1, 2003
Publisher: University of Oklahoma
Volume: 77Issue: 2Page: 105(1)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

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Published La Habana: Centro de Desarrollo de las Artes Visuales, c1990. 103pp.: col. ill., port.; 30cm. Note includes bibliographical references. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Herencia Clasica
It is a classic book about the syncretism of Spanish and African religions.
Very well done by the author Carlos A. Cruz and the illustrator Zaida del Rio.
I really recommend it. ... Read more