West of the Thirties: Discoveries Among the Navajo and Hopi

by Edward T. Hall

Book Overview

From 1933 to 1937, the great American??anthropologist Edward T. Hall lived and worked on??reservations in the Southwest, a frontier where four??cultures--Navajo, Hopi, Hispanic, and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385424221
• ISBN13: 9780385424226
• Release Date: January 1995
• Publisher: Anchor Books
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

West of the Thirties and the Sixties

I stumbled upon this book quite a number of years ago as I was writing my autobiography. I was impressed so by the book that I began a connection with Mr. Hall via mail. It was a very exciting time and very interesting. He knew little of me but I consider him a great friend, though I never met the man. I was sad when he died as I was hoping for another book, additional insights. I heard from his assistant that his home or office was trashed and much was stolen from him. Too bad the thieves wasted insights that were better than they. I experienced living on the Hopi/Navajo res in the Sixties. As I read West of the Thirties, I could have retitled the book West of the Sixties with only a few changes. I would recommend the book as a good read for all budding anthropologists and any one interested in the world of the 4-corners region, and they will come to lover that desolate and isolated land as I did, as Edward Hall did and as many others have.

An excellent memoir

This was a book that I stumbled upon quite by accident, looking at a shelf of books on Southwestern History. It is a treasure. Written in the 1990's, about his time in New Mexico and Arizona during the 1930's, Hall takes you right there with him, transporting you to another time and place. Especially worth reading are the sections describing his friendship with Indian Trader Lorenzo Hubbell--something you don't find many books about. All in all, an excellent book, filled with interesting bits of history, and a very entertaining read. Highly recommended.

Serendipitious memoir by a kind & sage anthropologist

This book is another serendipitious gem that I purchased for a song - one dollar - in a book sale, mistaking the title for a fictional novel about the urban West Thirties of Manhattan, rather than the historical account of life in the desert southwest of the 1930's that it actually is. Call me shallow - somehow the colorful cover art depicting a native American trading post caught my eye without my realizing the true nature, and value, of the book. That is, until I happily read it. I'm thankful to the universe for placing it in my hands. West of the Thirties is a moving, albeit too brief, memoir of American anthropologist Edward T. Hall's youthful years working with the Navajo and Hopi in the four corners region of Arizona & New Mexico north of Winslow, Arizona during the difficult days of the Great Depression. His recollections are evocative of a past that is now gone, so it's a window into a people, place, culture and time that has been overrun and swallowed up by modernity. What's more, this memoir proves worthy of a slow, meditative read for the compassionate sagacity with which Hall recalls the Navajo & Hopi, as well as the traders and the Federal administrators of New Deal programs that didn't always have wisdom or heart behind their rationales, and the nuggets of common sense with which Hall evidently lived and lives his life. This is a book that I dog-eared for the sagacious passages that stuck in my heart and mind as subtle rejoinders for how I can be a better person. Some of those nuggets were: From the Introduction, page xxix: "The Navajo and the Hopis also had stories to tell, their own personal stories...In telling me their stories, people were explaining themselves as products of their past." From page 54: "...if you worked with, instead of against, nature, things simply went better." From page 70: "It had been taken for granted not only that our system was the best and the most sensible one in the world, but that we had a right to impose it on anyone in our power. I now know...that it isn't just my own culture, but all cultures that act in these ways." From page 85: "...white society certainly had failed to use what was there before us, just waiting...to be applied. Identifying the talents of the unusual...has never been the strong point of American culture." From page 98: "When there is harmony, things go right; in its absence, things go wrong." From page 103: "For a Navajo, the world is of a piece. Nothing can be seen as unconnected. ...we of European descent...are only dimly edging toward an understanding of our part in the whole. To a Navajo, such an understanding is second nature, and we see it in their approach to the land." From page 166: "In our journey through life, one of the first pieces of baggage to get rid of is being judgemental of others, to say nothing of putting them down." From page 173: "...it should be clear that the human species would be well advised to assign only those who are wise and

A beautiful reminiscence of life in New Mexico

This captivating memoir vividly describes life in Santa Fe and the surrounding territory before all the changes that came with World War II. The author, a well-known anthropologist, had a fascinating childhood growing up on Canyon Road and attending Los Alamos Boys School before it became the site of the Manhattan Project. Reading about his adventures on the Hopi and Navajo reservations made me wish I could turn back the clock and visit those lands when they were still so remote and untouched. A beautiful, moving book by a man fully engaged with life.