Forty Seventh Star

New Mexico was ceded to the United States in 1848, at the end of the war with Mexico, but not until 1912 did President William Howard Taft sign the proclamation that promoted New Mexico from territory to state. Why did New Mexico’s push for statehood last sixty-four years? Conventional wisdom has it that racism was solely to blame. But this fresh look at the history finds a more complex set of obstacles, tied primarily to self-serving politicians. Forty-Seventh Star, published in New Mexico’s centennial year, is the first book on its quest for statehood in more than forty years. David V. Holtby closely examines the final stretch of New Mexico’s tortuous road to statehood, beginning in the 1890s. His deeply researched narrative juxtaposes events in Washington, D.C., and in the territory to present the repeated collisions between New Mexicans seeking to control their destiny and politicians opposing them, including Republican U.S. senators Albert J. Beveridge of Indiana and Nelson W. Aldrich of Rhode Island. Holtby places the quest for statehood in national perspective while examining the territory’s political, economic, and social development. He shows how a few powerful men brewed a concoction of racism, cronyism, corruption, and partisan politics that poisoned New Mexicans’ efforts to join the Union. Drawing on extensive Spanish-language and archival sources, the author also explores the consequences that the drive to become a state had for New Mexico’s Euro-American, Nuevomexicano, American Indian, African American, and Asian communities. Holtby offers a compelling story that shows why and how home rule mattered—then and now—for New Mexicans and for all Americans.

New Mexico was ceded to the United States in 1848, at the end of the war with Mexico, but not until 1912 did President William Howard Taft sign the proclamation that promoted New Mexico from territory to state. Why did New Mexico’s push for statehood last sixty-four years? Conventional wisdom has it that racism was solely to blame. But this fresh look at the history finds a more complex set of obstacles, tied primarily to self-serving politicians. Forty-Seventh Star, published in New Mexico’s centennial year, is the first book on its quest for statehood in more than forty years. David V. Holtby closely examines the final stretch of New Mexico’s tortuous road to statehood, beginning in the 1890s. His deeply researched narrative juxtaposes events in Washington, D.C., and in the territory to present the repeated collisions between New Mexicans seeking to control their destiny and politicians opposing them, including Republican U.S. senators Albert J. Beveridge of Indiana and Nelson W. Aldrich of Rhode Island. Holtby places the quest for statehood in national perspective while examining the territory’s political, economic, and social development. He shows how a few powerful men brewed a concoction of racism, cronyism, corruption, and partisan politics that poisoned New Mexicans’ efforts to join the Union. Drawing on extensive Spanish-language and archival sources, the author also explores the consequences that the drive to become a state had for New Mexico’s Euro-American, Nuevomexicano, American Indian, African American, and Asian communities. Holtby offers a compelling story that shows why and how home rule mattered—then and now—for New Mexicans and for all Americans.

On February 1, 1861, delegates at the Texas Secession Convention elected to leave the Union. The people of Texas supported the actions of the convention in a statewide referendum, paving the way for the state to secede and to officially become the seventh state in the Confederacy. Soon the Texans found themselves engaged in a bloody and prolonged civil war against their northern brethren. During the curse of this war, the lives of thousands of Texans, both young and old, were changed forever. This new anthology, edited by Kenneth W. Howell, incorporates the latest scholarly research on how Texans experienced the war. Eighteen contributors take us from the battlefront to the home front, ranging from inside the walls of a Confederate prison to inside the homes of women and children left to fend for themselves while their husbands and fathers were away on distant battlefields, and from the halls of the governor’s mansion to the halls of the county commissioner’s court in Colorado County. Also explored are well-known battles that took place in or near Texas, such as the Battle of Galveston, the Battle of Nueces, the Battle of Sabine Pass, and the Red River Campaign. Finally, the social and cultural aspects of the war receive new analysis, including the experiences of women, African Americans, Union prisoners of war, and noncombatants.

Impresiones de un Surumato en Nuevo México by Manuel Sariñana represents a remarkable literary recovery. For the first time, the novella is presented in its original Spanish and in English, painstakingly translated and annotated by Phillip B. Gonzales. Manuel Sariñana came to the New Mexico territory from Mexico to work as a Spanish-language journalist. While covering politics, he wrote and published Impresiones de un Surumato en Nuevo México as a picaresque work, a common genre in Mexico that uses satire to narrate a drama based on concrete social issues in the author’s immediate vicinity. In his preface, Sariñana makes his intent clear: to address the unseemly manner in which New Mexico’s Democratic Party attempts to gain leverage in elections. But, in a caricature of two immigrant peons, he surreptitiously takes to task how nuevomexicanos look down on people from Mexico. Gonzales provides a critical introduction, an interpretation of Sariñana’s piece, and a historical framework to contextualize the author’s experiences and the events alluded to in the novella. The result brings this important work of fiction to a new generation of readers.

"A new kind of history of the Southwest (mainly New Mexico and Arizona) that foregrounds the stories of Latino and Indigenous peoples who made the Southwest matter to the nation in the twentieth century"--Provided by publisher.

In Precarious Prescriptions, Laurie B. Green, John Mckiernan-González, and Martin Summers bring together essays that place race, citizenship, and gender at the center of questions about health and disease. Exploring the interplay between disease as a biological phenomenon, illness as a subjective experience, and race as an ideological construct, this volume weaves together a complicated history to show the role that health and medicine have played throughout the past in defining the ideal citizen. By creating an intricate portrait of the close associations of race, medicine, and public health, Precarious Prescriptions helps us better understand the long and fraught history of health care in America. Contributors: Jason E. Glenn, U of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston; Mark Allan Goldberg, U of Houston; Jean J. Kim; Gretchen Long, Williams College; Verónica Martínez-Matsuda, Cornell U; Lena McQuade-Salzfass, Sonoma State U; Natalia Molina, U of California, San Diego; Susan M. Reverby, Wellesley College; Jennifer Seltz, Western Washington U.