_Southwest_, by Laura Adams Armer (New York, 1935, OP) came from long living and brooding in desert land. It says something beautiful. _Talking to the Moon_, by John Joseph Mathews (University of Chicago Press, 1945) is set in the blackjack country of eastern Oklahoma. This Oxford scholar of Osage blood built his ranch house around a fireplace, flanked by shelves of books. His observations are of the outside, but they are informed by reflections made beside a fire. They are not bookish at all, but the spirits of great writers mingle with echoes of coyote wailing and wood-thrush singing. _Sky Determines: An Interpretation of the Southwest_, by Ross Calvin (New York, 1934; republished by the University of New Mexico Press) lives up to its striking title. The introductory words suggest the essence of the book: In New Mexico whatever is both old and peculiar appears upon examination to have a connection with the arid climate. Peculiarities range from the striking adaptations of the flora onward to those of fauna, and on up to those of the human animal. Sky determines. And the writer once having picked up the trail followed it with certainty, and indeed almost inevitably, as it led from ecology to anthropology and economics. Cultivated intellect is the highest form of civilization. It is inseparable from the arts, literature, architecture. In any civilized land, birds, trees, flowers, animals, places, human contributors to life out of the past, all are richer and more significant because of representations through literature and art. No literate person can listen to a skylark over an English meadow without hearing in its notes the melodies of Chaucer and Shelley. As the Southwest advances in maturity of mind and civilization, the features of the land take on accretions from varied interpreters. It is not necessary for an interpreter to write a whole book about a feature to bring out its significance. We need more gossipy books--something in the manner of _Pinon Country_ by Haniel Long (Duell, Sloan and Pearce, New York, 1941), in which one can get a swift slant on Billy the Kid, smell the pinon trees, feel the deeply religious attitude toward his corn patch of a Zuni Indian. Roy Bedichek's chapters on the mockingbird, in _Adventures with a Texas Naturalist_, are like rich talk under a tree on a pleasant patch of ground staked out for his claim by an April-voiced mockingbird. In _The Voice of the Coyote_ I tried to compass the whole animal, and I should think that the "Father of Song-Making" chapter might make coyote music and the night more interesting and beautiful for any listener. Intelligent writers often interpret without set purpose, and many books under various categories in this _Guide_ are interpretative. 3. General Helps