Sparkling text, stunning photographs

HOUSES of LOS CABOS is a magnificent book for coffee table or gift-giving, presenting as it does eighteen spectacular homes on the Southern Baja California coast, in Rigoberto Moreno's truly breathtaking color photographs and with commentary by both architects and homeowners. But the large, lushly-produced book is more than that: its presentation page and wonderful Introduction are written by respected Mexican authors, and in its Prologue Mauricio Martínez, whose Amaroma Editions has published many of Mexico's most important art and photography books, gives the reader a glimpse of the passion his team shared over the course of the project.

Poet Raú Aceves alludes first to the contrast between the desert, high cliffs and dazzling beaches of Los Cabos, and to its magic: "Some men become eagles/as some eagles become men./Others become salt in the sea/and carry legend away on the tides."

Then, in a surprisingly sparkling introductory text, Francisco Javier Ibarra documents the region's centuries of magic in a chronicle that extends from prehistory to current political events, from legend to little-known but memorable facts, from descriptions of Los Cabos as a distinctive ecosystem to Los Cabos as the setting for lively ancient and modern memoirs. By the time the English-speaking reader has perused the opening sections, (s)he realizes that this fine art book is also a glimpse into Mexico's Pacific coastal culture, that its writers are most generous in sharing their intimate view of what is sometimes considered Mexico's "Land's End"; (s)he will also be struck by the unusually careful translation, which allows full access to words as well as images, and hope that other international publishers follow Martínez' lead in this realm.

Opening HOUSES OF LOS CABOS, the first of Moreno's photographs one sees are brilliant angles of the massive cliffs and sea. This will be a book to engage one longer than most architectural/photographic tomes, as the eye cannot possibly take in even the natural details alone, in one sitting. The book's countless varied images also delight in their artful balance -- they are arranged in fine rhythm between interiors and exteriors, paeans to the landscape, to domestic architecture within the landscape, and to the inner life of luxe homes. The construction of architectural planes is celebrated throughout in gorgeous color, and described with substance and precision, to please the armchair traveler as well as the professional architect: architectural touches range from whimsical to majestic, allowing readers to avidly glean design ideas or to imagine themselves as honored houseguests.