Larger than life
Subtitle: New Mexico in the twentieth century
By: Ferenc M. Szasz.
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Published: 2006
Place of publication: Albuquerque
Language: eng
Number of pages: 298
ISBN-13: 9780826338839
Subjects: New Mexico -- History -- 20th century.; New Mexico -- Biography.
Genres: Biography.
Description: "Larger Than Life offers eleven essays that touch on a variety of southwestern themes. One section highlights three people who have dramatically shaped the region's history: pilot Charles A. Lindbergh, who helped turn New Mexico into a regional center for aviation and rocketry during the interwar years: physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who believed that New Mexico had restored him to health in the 1920s, and, as a consequence, chose Los Alamos as the site for the nation's top secret weapons laboratory in 1942; and first-term congressman Bill Richardson (currently governor), who inaugurated his skills at compromise by resolving a bitter environmental dispute in 1984 - skills that he would later utilize on the international stage."

"Other essays explore the cultural appeal of the Land of Enchantment from 1945 to the present, as well as the horrific ammunition explosion that virtually wiped the hamlet of Tolar, New Mexico, off the map in 1944." "A final section deals with several southwestern "mysteries," including the tale of an itinerant German immigrant who, in 1895, allegedly healed more than 5,000 people simply by touching them; and the collapse of Chaco Canyon's Threatening Rock - a 30,000-ton wall of sandstone that had threatened to destroy the structures of Pueblo Bonito for over two millennia."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Charles A. and Anne Morrow Lindbergh and the shaping of New Mexican history; title: J. Robert Oppenheimer and the state of New Mexico; title: Congressman Bill Richardson and the 1984 creation of the Bisti and De-na-zin Wilderness Areas in Northwest New Mexico; title: The cultures of modern New Mexico, 1940 to the early twenty-first century; title: Cutting the gordian knot : how Leslie R. Groves and Norris Bradbury made the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory permanent, 1945-48; title: New Mexico's forgotten nuclear tests : projects Gnome (1961) and Gasbuggy (1967); title: The history of atomic photography; title: Francis Schlatter : the spiritual healer of the Southwest; title: The Tolar, New Mexico, munitions train explosion, November 30, 1944; title: The saga of Chaco Canyon's "threatening rock," ca. 550 B.C.E.-22 January, 1941.