Beating Heart of the World

“A wonderfully researched history of the Indigenous people of Taos and their long struggle for autonomy. Beating Heart of the World is a story of tenacity, community organizing, and ultimately justice. Above all, it is the tale of the power of resistance. What an inspiration for our times! Much gratitude to Steve Davis for this effort.” – Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street and Woman Without Shame: Poems
“Beating Heart of the World tells the stirring tale of how the savvy stewards of Taos Pueblo forged an unlikely though slyly effective alliance with bohemian newcomers to protect Indigenous lands and tribal traditions that seemed on the brink of extinction. In Steven L. Davis’s engrossing account, we are reminded why Taos has long been such a fervent crossroads of anti-establishment thought and aesthetics. Here, art meets politics in unexpected, eccentric, and often bewitching ways.” – Hampton Sides, New York Times bestselling author of Blood and Thunder and The Wide Wide Sea
“These people worked together, over time, to reverse injustice and succeeded. That is such an important tale to tell … at any time but perhaps especially in our current climate of discord, division, and distrust.” – Sherry L. Smith, author of Bohemians West: Free Love, Family, and Radicals in Twentieth Century America
“In Beating Heart of the World, author Steven L. Davis arranges all the pieces of a complex and mysterious puzzle. A federal government bent on dispossessing Native America. The canny but beleaguered leaders of Taos Pueblo fighting against impossible odds for their survival. And the artists, writers, dreamers and bohemians of the Taos art colony who leveraged their worldwide fame in their cause. A compelling and inspiring story, beautifully told.” – Bryan Burrough, author of Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth

Steven L. Davis is the winner of the PEN Center Award for Research Nonfiction and the author, coauthor, or editor of eight previous books, including Dallas 1963; The Most Dangerous Man in America: Timothy Leary, Richard Nixon and the Hunt for the Fugitive King of LSD; and Viva Texas Rivers! Adventures, Misadventures, and Glimpses of Nirvana along Our Storied Waterways. The retired literary curator of the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University, he now lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

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