DNF. I really thought this would be an interesting book; I love New Mexico and the southwest in general. I knew about the Germans in Texas and figured this would be a read about those in NM. Too much stuff!! I started it, began skimming and just plain gave up..

DNF. I was literally unable to read this book. I kept falling asleep! Seriously. I thought I might enjoy the subject matter, since I was partially raised in New Mexico, but the writing was so dry and disjointed.

I enjoyed parts of this book, particularly the historical details of the development of the southwest in the United States; however, much of the book was disjointed and rambling. I am not posting this review online.

An absolutely fascinating read about a little known and often overlooked historical figure! I can't reading enough about Humboldt and Schelby's work is the most relevant and engaging I've come across!

I cannot accurately give a star rating to this, as I skimmed much of the book and completely skipped over some chapters.

This book has a huge thesis to cover--I felt like this was an example of a topic that needed narrowing down much more before it could be approved for a class paper. However, this isn't a class paper, so it can be as sprawling as it'd like to be! But it still seemed too wide-reaching, with no clear narrative and many instances of inserting random bits of information that never really tied into the chapter's topic.

The chapters I did read through were interesting, especially those about Humboldt himself, and about the Civil War era in the southwest. But many other chapters seemed jumbled--here's some biography of an important German, but here's some social criticism, but also some personal experience. There were also many spots where the author brushed off a topic that she had started to write about, but then seemed to realize wasn't relevant to the chapter's topic and was too broad to continue with.

The argument that the German culture has been demonized since WWII was one that I was interested in, but still wasn't sure about. There are many other cultures that have it much worse off than Germans do, but Shelby does make a good case for the fact that many important German works--scientific, literary, musical, etc.--were erased or ignored during the 1930s and 40s. It's a slippery line to cross nowadays, making a European, white culture seem like the victim, but the erasing of Germans from certain points in history is something that existed and is intriguing to learn about.

A few chapters in, I did search out a Humboldt biography ("The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World") and looked into Chamisso's "Peter Schlemihl," so if nothing else, I acquired many new tbr books from reading this!

I cannot say for certain who I would recommend this to, if anyone. People with strong interests in German history, U.S. southwest history, or Alexander Humboldt himself will definitely find various parts of this interesting. However, if you're looking for something with a tight thesis, I would avoid this. I'm not harping too much on the narrative style at this point, since I did read and ARC copy, and narrative connections and transitions may still be in the editing machine.