front cover of Memorials Matter
Memorials Matter
Emotion, Environment, and Public Memory at American Historical Sites
Jennifer K Ladino
University of Nevada Press, 2019
From the sculptured peaks of Mount Rushmore to the Coloradan prairie lands at Sand Creek to the idyllic islands of the Pacific, the West’s signature environments add a new dimension to the study of memorials. In such diverse and often dramatic landscapes, how do the natural and built environments shape our emotions?

In Memorials Matter, author Jennifer Ladino investigates the natural and physical environments of seven diverse National Park Service (NPS) sites in the American West and how they influence emotions about historical conflict and national identity. Chapters center around the region’s diverse inhabitants (Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, African, and Native Americans) and the variously traumatic histories these groups endured—histories of oppression, exploitation, incarceration, slavery, and genocide. Drawing on material ecocritical theory, Ladino emphasizes the ideological and political importance of memorials and how they evoke visceral responses that are not always explicitly “storied,” but nevertheless matter in powerful ways.

In this unique blend of narrative scholarship and critical theory, Ladino demonstrates how these memorial sites and their surrounding landscapes, combined with written texts, generate emotion and shape our collective memory of traumatic events. She urges us to consider our everyday environments and to become attuned to features and feelings we might have otherwise overlooked.
 
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Grand Canyon
A History of a Natural Wonder and National Park
Don Lago
University of Nevada Press, 2015
The Grand Canyon has long inspired deep emotions and responses. For the Native Americans who lived there, the canyon was home, full of sacred meanings. For the first European settlers to see it, the canyon drove them to great exploration adventures and Wild West dreams of wealth. The canyon also held deep importance for America’s pioneer conservationists such as Teddy Roosevelt, John Muir, and Aldo Leopold, and it played a central role in the emerging environmental movement.

The Grand Canyon became a microcosm of the history and evolving values of the National Park Service, long conflicted between encouraging tourism and protecting nature. Many vivid characters shaped the canyon’s past. Its largest story is one of cultural history and changing American visions of the land.

Grand Canyon: A History of a Natural Wonder and National Park is a mixture of great storytelling, unlikely characters, and important ideas. The book will appeal to both general readers and scholars interested in seeking a broader understanding of the canyon.
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The Powell Expedition
New Discoveries about John Wesley Powell's 1869 River Journey
Don Lago
University of Nevada Press, 2017
"The Powell Expedition is a thought-provoking, nuanced work that reads at times like a detective story, and it should offer much fodder for historians."
The Wall Street Journal


John Wesley Powell’s 1869 expedition down the Green and Colorado Rivers and through the Grand Canyon continues to be one of the most celebrated adventures in American history, ranking with the Lewis and Clark expedition and the Apollo landings on the moon. For nearly twenty years Lago has researched the Powell expedition from new angles, traveled to thirteen states, and looked into archives and other sources no one else has searched. He has come up with many important new documents that change and expand our basic understanding of the expedition by looking into Powell’s crewmembers, some of whom have been almost entirely ignored by Powell historians. Historians tended to assume that Powell was the whole story and that his crewmembers were irrelevant. More seriously, because several crew members made critical comments about Powell and his leadership, historians who admired Powell were eager to ignore and discredit them.
 
Lago offers a feast of new and important material about the river trip, and it will significantly rewrite the story of Powell’s famous expedition. This book is not only a major work on the Powell expedition, but on the history of American exploration of the West.
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Where the Sky Touched the Earth
The Cosmological Landscapes of the Southwest
Don Lago
University of Nevada Press, 2017
The landscapes of the American Southwest—the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, the Sedona red rocks—have long filled humans with wonder about nature. This is the home of Lowell Observatory, where astronomers first discovered evidence that the universe is expanding; Meteor Crater, where Apollo astronauts trained for the moon; and Native American tribes with their own ancient, rich ways of relating to the cosmos. With the personal, poetic style of the very best literary nature writing, Don Lago explores how these landscapes have offered humans a deeper sense of connection with the universe. While most nature writing never leaves the ground, Lago is one of the few writers who has applied it to the universe, seeking ties between humans and the astronomical forces that gave us birth.

Nowhere else in the world is the link between earth and sky so powerful. Lago witnesses a solar eclipse over the Grand Canyon, climbs primeval volcanos, and sees the universe in tree rings. Through ageless Native American ceremonies, modern telescopes, and even dreams of flying saucers, Lago, who is not only a poet but a true philosopher of science, strives to find order and meaning in the world and brings out the Southwest’s beauty and mystery.
 
 
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Walter Van Tilberg Clark
Critiques
Charlton Laird
University of Nevada Press, 1983

Beginning in 1849, Alfred Doten recorded his life in minute detail for more than 54 years. His revealing daily accounts of the West's lusty mining frontier included tales of lynching, vigilante justice, shootings in the street, grand opera and theatre, stock manipulations, seances, musical soirees, and general "jollifications." Clark selected and edited the most valuable portions of Doten's massive diaries. He said he knew of no other account, fact or fiction, that so graphically presented the tragic course of a single representative life through the violent transformations brought about by the California Gold Rush and the Nevada Silver Boom.

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A Short History Of Reno
Barbara Land
University of Nevada Press, 1995
This is an entertaining and anecdotal treatment of Reno's history. Wonderfully illustrated with dozens of black & white photographs, the authors uncover some little known facts and enlighten readers about Reno's colorful past and the parade of larger-than-life characters who left their mark on the city, including: pathfinder John C. Frémont who named the river coursing down from Lake Tahoe after his Paiute guide, Truckee; railroad barons who plotted out the financial heart of Nevada; gambling kings who ran strings of prostitutes and laundered money for gangsters like Pretty Boy Floyd and John Dillinger; the celebrities who made Reno a divorce mecca; the carnival barker named Pappy Smith who invented Harrold Club; bingo man Bill Harrah who made Nevada the entertainment capital of the world.
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A Short History of Las Vegas
Barbara Land
University of Nevada Press, 2004
Today’s Las Vegas welcomes 35 million visitors a year and reigns as the world’s premier gaming mecca. But it is much more than a gambling paradise. In A Short History of Las Vegas, Barbara and Myrick Land reveal a fascinating history beyond the mobsters, casinos, and showgirls. The authors present a complete story, beginning with southern Nevada’s indigenous peoples and the earliest explorers to the first pioneers to settle in the area; from the importance of the railroad and the construction of Hoover Dam to the arrival of the Mob after World War II; from the first isolated resorts to appear in the dusty desert to the upscale, extravagant theme resorts of today. Las Vegas—and its history—is full of surprises. The second edition of this lively history includes details of the latest developments and describes the growing anticipation surrounding the Las Vegas centennial celebration in 2005. New chapters focus on the recent implosions of famous old structures and the construction of glamorous new developments, headline-making mergers and multibillion-dollar deals involving famous Strip properties, and a concluding look at what life is like for the nearly two million residents who call Las Vegas home.
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Juniper Blue
(A Novel)
Susan Lang
University of Nevada Press, 2006

This engrossing new novel by acclaimed author Susan Lang continues the saga of Ruth Farley, the fiercely independent young woman who was the protagonist of Small Rocks Rising, published by the University of Nevada Press in 2002. Ruth is still on her homestead at the end of a rugged canyon in California’s Mojave Desert, still struggling to survive on her own and to recover from a brutal rape and the murder of her lover. Now she must also face the responsibility of motherhood. The ensuing story expands Ruth’s world to encompass the panorama of Depression-era Southern California—miners and ranchers hanging on until times are better; Indians trying to preserve their ancient culture and identity; Okies, vagrants, and breadlines; the wealth and glitter of the movie industry; and narrow-minded small-town gossips. Ruth’s life also expands as she adjusts to motherhood, trying to maintain her autonomy and isolation and trying to preserve the tenuous web that links her to the seductive ruthlessness of the desert and to its ancient people and their wisdom. Ruth is one of the most engaging characters in recent fiction, complex and contradictory, stubborn and vulnerable, passionately in love with her austere desert home. Lang tells her story, the saga of a fully modern woman seeking her own identity and destiny against the turbulent, colorful setting of the rapidly changing twentieth-century West.

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Moon Lily
(a novel)
Susan Lang
University of Nevada Press, 2008
Ruth Farley is a stubbornly independent, free-spirited woman who homesteaded a piece of land at Glory Springs, deep in a beautiful, remote canyon in the Southern California Mojave Desert. At the end of the 1930s she is still there, raising her two children and struggling to preserve her solitude. But the world is intruding. Her Indian friend Martha has been arrested for a murder she didn’t commit, and Ruth must join the Yuiatei tribe in trying to free her. In this final volume of Susan Lang’s Ruth Farley trilogy, Ruth discovers the limits of her autonomy and struggles to make peace with her painful past. As the story comes to a dramatic conclusion and the world descends into the madness of another war, Ruth finally understands that she is inextricably part of the human community and that her hard-won independence will not be sacrificed if she accepts and cherishes the bonds of love and friendship. Ruth Farley is one of the most memorable characters in recent fiction, a perplexing, sometimes exasperating, and utterly sympathetic modern woman torn between her desire for freedom and her need for love, her determination to live life on her own terms and the pressures that society places on a single woman. In this trilogy of novels, Susan Lang has achieved her place among our best contemporary fiction writers.
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Small Rocks Rising
(A Novel)
Susan Lang
University of Nevada Press, 2002
In 1929, Ruth Farley, a fiercely independent woman, homesteads a tract of land in a beautiful canyon in the Southern California desert. Determined to live on her own terms and to be free of troubling human attachments, Ruth initially rejects the help of the miners and cowboys who are her neighbors and struggles to develop the homestead on her own. Gradually, however, Ruth learns that survival is a far more complicated and dangerous business, and the entrapments of love sweeter, and more binding, than she had ever imagined. Determined to take possession of her land, Ruth must first face the consequences of her own stubborness and sensuality, and of mindless and terrible violence, as well as a bitter fight to stay alive through a harrowing and isolated winter. Only then, her hard-won wisdom forged in unbearable grief and wrenching physical trials, can she truly become part of the land she loves so intensely. Ruth Farley is a character of exceptional complexity—a liberated woman in a time when most women were tied to the home; a joyously sexual woman in a culture where most women merely "did their duty" for the men in their lives; a contradictory, self-centered, alienated woman who ultimately learns the true nature of love and community. Glory Springs, the site of Ruth's homestead, is a place of wondrous natural beauty; it is also, as we follow Ruth's tenuous search for peace and wisdom, a place that we recognize, that we, too, seek within our hearts. Small Rocks Rising is a novel of stunning richness and beauty, of memorable characters and unforgettable insight into a woman's secret and passionate soul.
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The Pinon Pine
A Natural And Cultural History
Ronald M. Lanner
University of Nevada Press, 1981

An engaging look at the history of the piñon pine and its ecosystem. Combining natural history and observations of the cultural importance of the tree to both native Indians and European settlers, Lanner provides information on the management of the tree and its interdependence with the birds and animals of the piñon-juniper woodland. Science, cultural history, and ecologicall issues, plus delicious recipes using the piñon pine nuts, make for a concise natural and cultural history of the piñon pine.

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A Natural History of Oregon's Lake Abert in the Northwest Great Basin Landscape
Ron Larson
University of Nevada Press, 2023

A beautifully detailed exploration of flora and fauna.

Author Ron Larson offers a natural history of a Great Basin landscape that focuses on the northern region including Lake Abert and Abert Rim, and the adjacent area in southcentral Oregon. Although the jewel of this landscape is a lake, the real story is the many plants and animals—from the very primitive, reddish, bacteria-like archaea that thrive only in its high-salinity waters to the Golden Eagles and ravens that soar above the desert. The untold species in and around the lake are part of an ecosystem shaped by ageless processes from massive lava flows, repeated drought, and blinding snowstorms. It is an environment rich with biotic and physical interconnections going back millions of years. 

The Great Basin, and in particular the Lake Abert region, is special and needs our attention to ensure it remains that way. We must recognize the importance of water for Great Basin ecosystems and the need to manage it better, and we must acknowledge how rich the Great Basin is in natural history. Salt lakes, wherever they occur, are valuable and provide critically important habitat for migratory water birds, which are unfortunately under threat from upstream water diversions and climate change. Larson’s book will help people understand that the Great Basin is unique and that wise stewardship is necessary to keep it unspoiled. The book is an essential reference source, drawing together a wide range of materials that will appeal to general readers and researchers alike.

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The Deep Blue Memory
Monique Laxalt Urza
University of Nevada Press, 1993
Monique Laxalt Urza's first novel is an intimate portrait of a second-generation Basque-American who struggles to reconcile her memories of the simplicity of the past with the reality of change in the present. The Deep Blue Memory is a fictionalized story of immigration told from the point of view of the granddaughter of Basque immigrant grandparents and daughter of a prominent first-generation family. The Deep Blue Memory addresses themes central to all of human existence. In particular, the book examines the eternal human search for identity that at the level of the first generation is forward-looking, but at the level of the grandchildren of immigrants, too often looks backward, clinging to images of a remembered past. The Deep Blue Memory treats the elements of time and knowledge, and of art and reality, as being intertwined. More than about any specific character, this book is about family—its make-up, its complexity, and its delicateness when resettled in America, the land of cataclysmic change.
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The Basque Hotel
Robert Laxalt
University of Nevada Press, 1993
This novel is the first volume in Laxalt's highly acclaimed Basque-family trilogy. It tells the story of Pete, the son of a Basque immigrant, and his coming of age in Depression-era Carson City. Pete’s immigrant parents run the Basque Hotel, bed and meals, whiskey and wine in Prohibition time for sheepherders and town characters. Pete is indifferent to his heritage except for disquiet about his parents’ ignorance of such American traditions as Christmas trees. Pete, too prone to dreams, undergoes his rites of passage—cruelty and kindness, disillusionment, love and terror, pathos and hilarious adventure, and finally, a cautious understanding of his world.
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Child of the Holy Ghost
Robert Laxalt
University of Nevada Press, 1997
The second installment in Laxalt's Basque-family trilogy, this novel takes an adult-aged Pete to the Basque Country to uncover his parents' secret reasons for immigrating to the U.S. Pete finds himself stepping back into a medieval morality, into the rigid and unrelenting code of his ancestors, older and stronger than reason. Denied by his own blood kin, cold anger forges his determination to pierce the silence of the villagers and learn the circumstances of Maitia’s, his mother’s birth. One by one, the ghosts rise up, piecing together the story of Maitia’s shame and her resolve to gain the respect that could only be found in America. Interwoven is the story of Petya, Pete’s father, forced to flee the high Pyrenees by accident and find a new life as a lonely sheepherder in the northern deserts of Nevada. His struggles with loneliness and the temptations of emerging manhood provide a background for the stark reality of a young immigrant whose pain and growing sense of self-determination transform him into the essential being we know as American.
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Dust Devils
A Novella
Robert Laxalt
University of Nevada Press, 1997
An action-packed story set during the violent and conflict-ridden days of the early 20th century, Dust Devils takes place in the rugged mountains and deserts of Eastern California and Northern Nevada. Ira Hamilton, the teenage son of rugged Indian-hating rancher John D. Hamilton, wins the bronc-riding competition at a local rodeo and comes away with a special prize: a beautiful Arabian colt. But the horse is soon stolen by Hawkeye, a notorious local rustler. Accompanied by Cricket, a young Paiute who has been his closest companion since infancy, Ira vows to retrieve his prize. On the way, Ira must find the courage to overcome the challenges of nature and outlaw, and to love the woman of his choice. This vivid tale will thrill readers with its authentic depiction of Nevada's lonely back country, its hardy ranchers, and its native peoples. Ira Hamilton's adventure shows us the last days of the Old West, when cowboys, sheepmen, and Indians still struggled to survive and overcome their long-standing animosities, and violent men rode boldly and unhindered across the harsh landscape.
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Governor's Mansion, The
Robert Laxalt
University of Nevada Press, 1997
In the dramatic third volume of Robert Laxalt’s trilogy, Leon—the eldest son of immigrant parents—becomes the governor of Nevada during the 1960s. An able lawyer in his own right, he is a neophyte when it comes to dealing with the political ploys of the entrenched officeholders who dominate in Nevada. Leon faces the crisis of his budding political career when he is caught between J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, bent on cleaning out the Mafia, and his own need to protect the autonomy of his native state. An unexpected ally appears when the only man rich enough to solve the governor’s dilemma comes to Nevada—reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes.
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In a Hundred Graves
A Basque Portrait
Robert Laxalt
University of Nevada Press, 2016

The Basques of Europe are legendary for the curtain of privacy they have always drawn around their world, shielding it from visitors from the outside. As a result, accounts of the inner workings of Basque village life are almost nonexistent. In this unique book, author Robert Laxalt has managed to penetrate the deep reserve of Basque village folk. Shepherds, troubadours, merchants, and smugglers, caught up in the panorama of daily life, parade before the reader. They are portrayed against a backdrop of green rugged mountains and stone buildings, typical of the Basque provinces in France and Spain. Laxalt, an American born of Basque parents, unveils the Basque character with warmth, wry humor, and above all, honesty. 

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The Land of My Fathers
A Son's Return to the Basque Country
Robert Laxalt
University of Nevada Press, 2024

In 1960, renowned Nevada writer Robert Laxalt moved himself and his family to a small Basque village in the French Pyrenees. The son of Basque emigrants, Laxalt wanted to learn as much as he could about the ancient and mysterious people from which he was descended and about the country from which his parents came. Thanks to his Basque surname and a wide network of family connections, Laxalt was able to penetrate the traditional reserve of the Basques in a way that outsiders rarely can. In the process, he gained rare insight into the nature of the Basques and the isolated, beautiful mountain world where they have lived for uncounted centuries. Based on Laxalt’s personal journals of this and a later sojourn in 1965, The Land of My Fathers is a moving record of a people and their homeland. Through Laxalt’s perceptive eyes and his wife Joyce’s photographs, we observe the Basques’ market days and festivals, join their dove hunts and harvests, share their humor and history, their deep sense of nationalism, their abiding pride in their culture and their homes, and discover the profound sources of the Basques’ strength and their endurance as a people. Photography by Joyce Laxalt.

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front cover of A Lean Year and Other Stories
A Lean Year and Other Stories
Robert Laxalt
University of Nevada Press, 1994
In this collection of sixteen short stories, Robert Laxalt illuminates the Nevada of the 1950s. Written when Laxalt was in his twenties, the stories are as fresh as if they were penned yesterday. Humanity good and bad, humor and cruelty, satire and adventure are found in these early stories of a Nevada poised on the brink of change.

In the lead story, Cowboy Clint Hamilton laments that the town is “getting more like a big city every day” as the traditional gambling joints of earlier times give way to the gaudy casinos that will soon become modern glitz.

Sobering experiences from his days as a reporter give Laxalt an insight into murderers and prison life and lethal gas chambers. In a chilling short story, “The Snake Pen,” we find the seed of Robert Laxalt’s celebrated novel, A Man In the Wheatfield.

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Nevada
A History
Robert Laxalt
University of Nevada Press, 1991
An evocative portrait of the state that "didn't deserve to be" but became one anyway. First published in 1977, this edition includes a new preface that reexamines Laxalt's predictions for Nevada made almost 20 years ago and reflects on the changes that have occurred in the state: the urban plight of Las Vegas and Reno, the renewed appreciation of the land by conservationists and opportunists, and the explosive growth of tourism and gaming.
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A Private War
An American Code Officer in the Belgian Congo
Robert Laxalt
University of Nevada Press, 1998

In this vivid memoir, Laxalt recalls his service during WWII as a code officer in the Belgian Congo. In this remote jungle outpost, a secret war was being fought for control of the world’s future. Deep in the Congo lay a mine that produced a little-known substance called uranium, and for reasons no one then understood, the Allies and the Germans were struggling ferociously to control this mine and its ore. The cloth edition is a limited numbered, signed edition.

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A Cup of Tea in Pamplona
Robert Laxalt
University of Nevada Press, 1993
In this slim tale, Laxalt shows the ugly, desperate, and sometimes violent world of the contrabandiers, Basque smugglers in the Pyrenees. Set in the 1960s, the terse story begins with Nikolas, driven by his family’s financial despair, taking on work from Gregorio, the patrón of a small team of smugglers. Nikolas must smuggle fifty horses over the mountain ridges between France and Spain. If he’s caught, jail and ruin are certain; death is possible. This engrossing novella, told with tight narration and compelling dialogue, shows the grinding poverty and ethnic tensions in Basque lands, fifty years ago. 
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front cover of A Man in the Wheatfield
A Man in the Wheatfield
Robert Laxalt
University of Nevada Press, 2002
Set in a small Nevada town of Italian immigrants, this allegorical tale illustrates the human traits of evil and fear. Laxalt relays his shocking story simply and concisely. Father Savio Lazzaroni is obsessed with a vision of evil. Mayor Manuel Cafferata is only concerned with his own standing in a tiny village peopled with Italian immigrants. Into their isolated town comes Smale Calder, the first outsider to set up business in the tightly knit society. The events that befall these three men and the villagers reveal the chilling ways in which people deal with fear and prejudice. When Calder’s secret passion for rattlesnakes is discovered, the lives of all involved are changed in a dramatic sequence of emotions and events. Laxalt’s quiet buildup of suspense and violence will sneak up on readers and leave them questioning the meaning of good and innocence. One of the best works written in the West, this novella was honored alongside Hemingway and Bellow upon its first release in 1964.
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Sweet Promised Land, 40th Anniversary
Robert Laxalt
University of Nevada Press, 2007
How long has it been since you fell in love with a book?

Dominique Laxalt was sixteen when he left the French Pyrenees for America. He became a sheepherder in the Nevada desert and nearby hills of the Sierra. Like all his fellow Basque immigrants, Dominique dreamed of someday returning to the land of his beginnings. Most Basques never made the journey back, but Dominique finally did return for a visit with family and friends. Sweet Promised Land is the story of that trip, told by his son Robert, who accompanied him to the pastoral mountain village of Tardets in France. Dominique came home victorious, the adventurer who had conquered the unknown and found his fortune in the New World. He told of his life in America, the hardships and challenges, and began to realize that he had changed since his departure from Tardets. By the end of the visit, he knew with certainty where he belonged.

During the past fifty years, this book has become a classic in Western American literature, still beloved by the Basque-American community. In celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the book’s publication, western literature scholar Ann Ronald wrote a new foreword, discussing the book in the context of American and Nevada literature.
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front cover of Sweet Promised Land, 50th ed.
Sweet Promised Land, 50th ed.
Robert Laxalt
University of Nevada Press, 2007
How long has it been since you fell in love with a book?

Dominique Laxalt was sixteen when he left the French Pyrenees for America. He became a sheepherder in the Nevada desert and nearby hills of the Sierra. Like all his fellow Basque immigrants, Dominique dreamed of someday returning to the land of his beginnings. Most Basques never made the journey back, but Dominique finally did return for a visit with family and friends. Sweet Promised Land is the story of that trip, told by his son Robert, who accompanied him to the pastoral mountain village of Tardets in France. Dominique came home victorious, the adventurer who had conquered the unknown and found his fortune in the New World. He told of his life in America, the hardships and challenges, and began to realize that he had changed since his departure from Tardets. By the end of the visit, he knew with certainty where he belonged.

During the past fifty years, this book has become a classic in Western American literature, still beloved by the Basque-American community. In celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the book’s publication, western literature scholar Ann Ronald wrote a new foreword, discussing the book in the context of American and Nevada literature.
[more]

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Basque Nationalism and the Spanish State
André Lecours
University of Nevada Press, 2016

An examination of Basque nationalism from a historical perspective. Basque nationalism has been extensively examined from the perspectives of Basque culture and internal conditions in the Basque Country, but André Lecours is among the first to demonstrate how Basque nationalism was shaped by the many forms and historical phases of the Spanish state. His discussion employs one of the most debated approaches in the social sciences—historical institutionalism—and it includes an up-to-date examination of the circumstances for, and consequences of, recent events such as ETA's announcement in 2006 of a permanent cease-fire. Lecours also analyzes other aspects of Basque nationalism, including the international relations of the Basque Autonomous Government, as well as the responses of the contemporary Spanish state and how it deploys its own brand of nationalism. Finally, the book offers a comparative discussion of Basque, Catalan, Scottish, Flemish, and Quebecois nationalist movements, suggesting that nationalism in the Basque Country, despite the historical presence of violence, is in many ways similar to nationalism in other industrialized democracies. Basque Nationalism and the Spanish State is an original and provocative discussion that is essential reading for anyone interested in the Basques or in the development of modern nationalist movements.

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front cover of The City That Ate Itself
The City That Ate Itself
Butte, Montana and Its Expanding Berkeley Pit
Brian James Leech
University of Nevada Press, 2018
Winner of the Mining History Association Clark Spence Award for the Best Book in Mining History, 2017-2018

Brian James Leech provides a social and environmental history of Butte, Montana’s Berkeley Pit, an open-pit mine which operated from 1955 to 1982. Using oral history interviews and archival finds, The City That Ate Itself explores the lived experience of open-pit copper mining at Butte’s infamous Berkeley Pit. Because an open-pit mine has to expand outward in order for workers to extract ore, its effects dramatically changed the lives of workers and residents. Although the Berkeley Pit gave consumers easier access to copper, its impact on workers and community members was more mixed, if not detrimental.
 
The pit’s creeping boundaries became even more of a problem. As open-pit mining nibbled away at ethnic communities, neighbors faced new industrial hazards, widespread relocation, and disrupted social ties. Residents variously responded to the pit with celebration, protest, negotiation, and resignation. Even after its closure, the pit still looms over Butte. Now a large toxic lake at the center of a federal environmental cleanup, the Berkeley Pit continues to affect Butte’s search for a postindustrial future.
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A Short History of Denver
Stephen J. Leonard
University of Nevada Press, 2016
A Short History of Denver covers more than 150 years of Denver’s rich history. The book recounts the takeover of Native American lands, the founding of small towns on the South Platte River at the base of the Rocky Mountains, and the creation of a city, which by 1890 was among the nation’s major western urban centers. Leonard and Noel tell the stories of powerful economic and political leaders such as John Evans, Horace Tabor, and David Moffat, and delve into the contributions of women, including Elizabeth Byers and Margaret (Molly) Brown. The book also recognizes the importance of the city’s ethnic communities, including African Americans, Asians, Latinos, and many others.
 
A Short History of Denver portrays the city’s twentieth-century ups and downs, including the City Beautiful movement, political corruption, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, and the Great Depression of the 1930s. Here readers will find the meat and potatoes of economic and political history and much more, including sports history, social history, and the history of metropolitan-wide efforts to preserve the past.
 
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Reading The Trail
Exploring The Literature And Natural History Of The California Crest
Corey Lee Lewis
University of Nevada Press, 2005

A provocative new way to read and interpret the classic works of John Muir, Mary Austin, and Gary Snyder, and to bring their ideas into the discussion of ecological values and the current environmental crisis. Lewis combines a perceptive discussion of their work and ideas with an engaging account of his own trail experiences as hiker/backpacker and volunteer trail builder, proposing that such a field-based, interdisciplinary approach to literary study and outdoors experience can enrich our appreciation for the work of nature writers.

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A Reporter At Large
Dateline: Pyramid Lake, Nevada
Aj Liebling
University of Nevada Press, 1999
In 1949, renowned journalist A. J. Liebling came to Reno to obtain a divorce, which required that he establish residency in Nevada for a period of six weeks. Liebling stayed at a guest ranch on the shores of Pyramid Lake. While there, his reporter’s curiosity was engaged by a bitter dispute raging between the Paiutes and non-Indian squatters who were claiming the most agriculturally productive lands of the reservation and the waters feeding the lake that was the economic and spiritual heart of the Paiutes’ ancient culture.

Liebling recorded the litigation over the fate of the Pyramid Lake Reservation lands in a series of articles published in The New Yorker in 1955. Reprinted here in their entirety, the essays discuss the affair in detail, following it from the shores of the lake to the halls of Congress, and introducing readers to the colorful world of 1950s Nevada. This is a valuable record of one of Nevada’s most enduring and significant debates over the uses of the land and the precious water that nourishes it. Introduction by Elmer R. Rusco.

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Tungsten in Peace and War, 1918–1946
Ronald H. Limbaugh
University of Nevada Press, 2011
Tungsten is a rare ferrous metal whose ability to form molecular compounds with other elements has made it one of the essential elements in steelmaking, electronics, and various military technologies. This is the first comprehensive study of the use of tungsten and its role in modern technology, politics, and international trade. The book combines a detailed general overview of tungsten’s uses in science and technology with a history of tungsten mining in the U.S. and elsewhere; international competition for tungsten supplies, especially between the two world wars of the twentieth century; and the complex national and international politics involved in supporting and protecting the U.S. tungsten supply and tungsten-mining industry. Tungsten in Peace and War, 1918–1946 is a significant addition to the history of technology and a revelation of the complex role that tungsten and other critical metals play in national and international politics and in the world economy.
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Calaveras Gold
The Impact Of Mining On A Mother Lode County
Ronald H. Limbaugh
University of Nevada Press, 2003

California’s Calaveras County—made famous by Mark Twain and his celebrated Jumping Frog—is the focus of this comprehensive study of Mother Lode mining. Most histories of the California Mother Lode have focused on the mines around the American and Yuba Rivers. However, the “Southern Mines”—those centered around Calaveras County in the central Sierra—were also important in the development of California’s mineral wealth. Calaveras Gold offers a detailed and meticulously researched history of mining and its economic impact in this region from the first discoveries in the 1840s until the present. Mining in Calaveras County covered the full spectrum of technology from the earliest placer efforts through drift and hydraulic mining to advanced hard-rock industrial mining. Subsidiary industries such as agriculture, transportation, lumbering, and water supply, as well as a complex social and political structure, developed around the mines. The authors examine the roles of race, gender, and class in this frontier society; the generation and distribution of capital; and the impact of the mines on the development of political and cultural institutions. They also look at the impact of mining on the Native American population, the realities of day-to-day life in the mining camps, the development of agriculture and commerce, the occurrence of crime and violence, and the cosmopolitan nature of the population. Calaveras County mining continued well into the twentieth century, and the authors examine the ways that mining practices changed as the ores were depleted and how the communities evolved from mining camps into permanent towns with new economic foundations and directions. Mining is no longer the basis of Calaveras’s economy, but memories of the great days of the Mother Lode still attract tourists who bring a new form of wealth to the region.

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The Newspapers Of Nevada
A History And Bibliography, 1854-1979
Richard E. Lingenfelter
University of Nevada Press, 1984

This new bibliography of Nevada's newspapers supersedes and greatly expands on previous works. More than 800 publications are now included: traditional newspapers, penny shoppers, comic and campaign sheets, entertainment and matrimonial guides, and fictitious newspapers that had life only in the columns of other papers. Also included is a brief appendix of early newspapers from boarder states that reported regularly on Nevada. The authors have provided a brief historical sketch of each publication, together with a list and location of known copies of the original papers, plus current microfilm holdings. The bibliography also documents frequency of publication, proprietorship, title changes, printing locations, and political affiliation. This volume will be of value to historians ranging from scholars to genealogy buffs who need access to the information only newspapers can provide.

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Witnesses to the Struggle
Imaging the 1930s California Labor Movement
Anne Loftis
University of Nevada Press, 2014
In this groundbreaking interdisciplinary study, Loftis examines the artists who put a human face on the farmworkers’ plight in California during the Great Depression, focusing on writer John Steinbeck, photographer Dorothea Lange, sociologist and author Paul Taylor, and journalist Carey McWilliams. Loftis probes the interplay between journalism and art in the 1930s, when both academics and artists felt an urgent need to be relevant in the face of enormous misery. The power of their work grew out of their personal involvement in both the labor struggles and the hardships endured by workers and their families. Steinbeck, Lange, and the other artists and intellectuals in their circles created the public images of their times. Works such as The Grapes of Wrath or Lange’s Migrant Mother actually helped mold public opinion and form government policies. Even today these works remain icons in our shared perception of that era. Loftis helps us understand why this art still seems the truest representation of those desperate times, three-quarters of a century later.
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In The Shadow Of The Strip
Las Vegas Stories
Richard Logsdon
University of Nevada Press, 2003
Las Vegas holds a unique place in the popular imagination and in the work of any number of contemporary writers of fiction. The fourteen stories in this anthology explore the multifarious personalities of America’s “Sin City” through the experiences of the dreamers and gamblers, the losers and the lost, who inhabit Las Vegas and confront its myriad attractions and disappointments.
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Combat Zoning
Military Land-Use Planning In Nevada
David Loomis
University of Nevada Press, 1993

Loomis provides a clear and disturbing picture of military land-use planning and how it has affected residents in Nevada. He contends that a lack of citizen participation in the development of land-use plans is a weakness in the planning process and that both the military and the citizenry should take an active role to avoid future conflicts.

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Fdr'S Moviemaker
Memoirs And Scripts
Pare Lorentz
University of Nevada Press, 1992

"The films of Pare Lorentz are acknowledged masterpieces of world cinema. They are groundbreaking documentary records of our country in the hard years of the Depression." —William M. Drennen, Jr.In the depths of the Great Depression, the U.S. Government produced a series of films about the pressing problems facing the nation—drought, flood, poverty, and slums. Starting with a minuscule initial budget of $6,000, Lorentz, a young film critic from New York who had never made a motion picture, was hired to head the project. The first fruit of his labor, The Plow That Broke the Plains, was a moving and dramatic account of the Dust Bowl that met with immediate and critical acclaim. Lorentz followed up his first film with The River, a history of the Mississippi River Basin and the effect of the Tennessee Valley Authority on the area. Both films demonstrated the potential of the documentary as a powerful impetus to social change, prompting widespread discussion not only of the problems they presented but also of the documentary form itself. This book combines the autobiographical history of a creative communicator and pioneer documentary filmmaker with the full scripts of The Plow That Broke the Plains, The River, Ecce Homo, and The Fight for Life.

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Ceremonies Of The Damned
Poems
Adrian C. Louis
University of Nevada Press, 1997
The world of acclaimed Native American poet Adrian Louis is harsh and full of pain—the blizzard-blasted plains and dusty towns of the northern Midwest, the hopeless barrenness of the Reservation, and a bleak interior world of loss, illness, and despair. Louis’s poems bring us to a place where ghosts hitchhike and the traditional pow-wow becomes an affirmation of bitter survival, where the lives of the young end too often in acts of meaningless self-destruction, and where his own existence becomes a daily battle with his cherished wife’s decline into the dementia of Alzheimer’s disease. Louis is a writer of extraordinary courage and skill, and these powerful, moving poems, wrested from the harsh experience of the Rez and his own lonely struggle with a merciless illness, will awe their readers with their brilliance and desperate humanity.
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The Ghost Dancers
A Novel
Adrian C. Louis
University of Nevada Press, 2021

Adrian C. Louis’s previously unpublished early novel has given us “the unsayable said” of the Native American reservation. A realistic look at reservation life, The Ghost Dancers explores—very candidly—many issues, including tribal differences, “urban Indians” versus “rez Indians,” relationships among Blacks, Whites, and Indians, police tactics on and off the rez, pipe ceremonies and sweat-lodge ceremonies, alcoholism and violence on the rez, visitations of the supernatural, poetry and popular music, the Sixties and the Vietnam War, the aims and responsibilities of journalism, and, most prominently, interracial sexual relationships. Readers familiar with Louis’s life and other works will note interesting connections between the protagonist, Bean, and Louis himself, as well as a connection between The Ghost Dancers and other Louis writings—especially his sensational novel Skins.

It’s 1988, and Lyman “Bean” Wilson, a Nevada Indian and middle-aged professor of journalism at Lakota University in South Dakota, is reassessing his life. Although Bean is the great-grandson of Wovoka, the Paiute leader who initiated the Ghost Dance religion, he is not a full-blood Indian and he endures the scorn of the Pine Ridge Sioux, whose definition of Indian identity is much narrower. A man with many flaws, Bean wrestles with his own worst urges, his usually ineffectual efforts to help his family, and his determination to establish his identity as an Indian. The result is a string of family reconnections, sexual adventures, crises at work, pipe and sweat-lodge ceremonies, and—through his membership in the secret Ghost Dancers Society—political activism, culminating in a successful plot to blow the nose off George Washington’s face on Mount Rushmore.

Quintessentially Louis, this raw, angry, at times comical, at times heartbreaking novel provides an unflinching look at reservation life and serves as an unyielding tribute to a generation without many choices.

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Wild Indians And Other Creatures
Adrian C. Louis
University of Nevada Press, 1997
This stunning book will startle readers who harbor romantic notions about contemporary Native American life. In these ten irreverent and interrelated short stories, Louis interweaves his versions of traditional Trickster tales with human stories to create something new and arresting. Set on and around the Pine Ridge Reservation of South Dakota, these unsettling, often politically incorrect stories function almost as a novel. Many are laugh-out-loud funny, while others are stark and sad, yet grimly human and powerful. In this collection, Louis, one of the leading Native American poets, presents an unblinking look at the social ills of reservation life while at the same time speaking of hope and survival for native peoples.
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Skins
A Novel
Adrian C. Louis
University of Nevada Press, 2022
By the end of the twentieth century, Adrian C. Louis had become one of the most powerful voices in the canon of Native American literature. Skins, his best-known work, is now offered by the University of Nevada Press with a new foreword by David Pichaske.

It’s the early 1990s and Rudy Yellow Shirt and his brother, Mogie, are living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, home of the legendary Oglala Sioux warrior Crazy Horse. Both Vietnam veterans, the men struggle with daily life on the rez. Rudy, a criminal investigator with the Pine Ridge Public Safety Department, must frequently arrest his neighbors and friends, including his brother, who has become a rez wino.

But when Rudy falls and hits his head on a rock while pursuing a suspected murderer, Iktome the trickster enters his brain. Iktome restores Rudy’s youthful sexual vigor—long-lost to years of taking high blood pressure pills—and ignites his desire for political revenge via an alter ego, the “Avenging Warrior.” As the Avenging Warrior, Rudy takes direct action to punish local criminals. In a violent act, he torches the local liquor store, nearly burning Mogie alive while he is hiding on the store’s roof, plotting to steal booze. Although the brothers reconcile before Mogie dies, he leaves the Avenging Warrior with one final mission: go to Mount Rushmore and blow the nose off George Washington’s face.

Louis’s critically acclaimed novel was made into a movie in 2002, directed by Chris Eyre.
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The Overland Journey From Utah To California
Wagon Travel From The City Of Saints To The City Of Angels
Edward Leo Lyman
University of Nevada Press, 2008
<br> The wagon trail between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles is one of the most important but least-known elements of nineteenth-century western migration, favored because it could be used for travel and freighting year-round. It was, however, arguably the most difficult route that pioneers traveled with any consistency in the entire history of the country, leapfrogging from one sometimes dubious desert watering place to the next and offering few havens for the sick, weary, or unfortunate. <br> This book is the first history of the complete Southern Route and of the people who developed and used it. Based on extensive research, including many early travelers’ accounts, the book discusses the exploration and development of the Old Spanish Trail. Lyman’s discussions of relations between the Mormons and the Native American peoples of the region and of the Mountain Meadows Massacre offer fresh and important analyses of these vital aspects of the westward movement.<br> <br>
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