A majority of the state histories of the Southwest have been written
with the hope of securing an adoption for school use. It would require
a blacksnake whip to make most juve-niles, or adults either, read these
productions, as devoid of picturesqueness, life-blood, and intellectual
content as so many concrete slabs. No genuinely humanistic history
of the Southwest has ever been printed. There are good factual
histories--and a history not based on facts can't possibly be good--but
the lack of synthesis, of intelligent evaluations, of imagination, of
the seeing eye and portraying hand is too evident. The stuff out of
which history is woven--diaries, personal narratives, county histories,
chronicles of ranches and trails, etc.--has been better done than
history itself.