Enchantment and Exasperation

An Irreverent History of New Mexico

By: Jordan Blake Carter

Narrated by: Aaron Fuchs

New Mexico has always lived between extremes. It is ancient and futuristic, sacred and absurd, breathtaking and infuriating, a place where thousand-year-old pueblos sit down the highway from a spaceport, where UFO museums coexist with world-class art, and where chile is a state religion. Enchantment and Exasperation is a romp through thousands of years of survival, reinvention, rebellion, and weirdness.

You will meet the mammoth hunters who started it all, the Chacoan engineers who built cosmic cities, the conquistadors who arrived looking for gold that did not exist, the Pueblo warriors who drove them out, the Mexicans who inherited a problem, the Americans who annexed it with confidence but no clue, the outlaws who terrorized it, the scientists who blew it up, and the tourists who still cannot find it on a map.

Funny, irreverent, and rooted in deep respect for the people who have always called this place home, this book is for anyone who has ever wondered how New Mexico became the most enchanting and exasperating patch of desert in the world.

©2025 Jordan Blake Carter (P)2026 Jordan Blake Carter