In 1986, Penelope O’Malley moved to Malibu, at that time a small community of oddballs and cantankerous isolationists, hoping to find peaceful exile from Los Angeles and a life that had become too frantic and confused. She knew little then of the landscape that she hoped would inspire her—who owned it, what manner of flora and fauna it might support—and she wasn’t much interested. Nor did she give much thought to the people who would become her neighbors. As it turned out, her life on this urban-wildland frontier was very different from what she had planned. Malibu Diary is O’Malley’s account of her years as a resident of this beautiful, beleaguered Southern California coastal community. Here, a landscape of rare beauty conceals geological and climatic treachery, and human presence endangers a rich but fragile ecosystem. Far from isolating herself from the ills of contemporary urban life, O’Malley found herself deeply engaged in a community where realtors lusted after the magnificent hills and beachfront, Native Americans fought to protect the artifacts of their ancestors, and locals, no matter how resistant to development, were forced to address such pressing urban issues as zoning and sewage treatment. Malibu’s decision to incorporate introduced politics into the quiet village while horrendous fires and floods destroyed property and the natural environment. Malibu Diary combines environmental history, personal memoir, and a meditation on the complicated relationships between humans and the landscapes they destroy. It is also the story of a colorful community, of how change has happened—and why—and what it has meant. And it is, ultimately, the story of many communities where people try to resist development, “assuming little responsibility to ameliorate the effects of our having settled here.” 

The Cortez Hills Expansion Project archaeological excavations uncovered a wealth of information about the Cortez Mining District, from its beginning in 1863 to the government-mandated end to the mining of precious metals in the district during World War II. Obermayr and McQueen use archaeological data as a foundation to tell the story of life in one of Nevada’s most intriguing, long-lived mining districts. Archaeologists excavate and analyze many thousands of artifacts, uncovering the homes and workplaces—and even trash dumps—of prospectors and miners, mill workers, charcoal burners, brickmakers, blacksmiths, teamsters, and families. They present an archaeological view of everyday life: how Cortez was populated by a variety of ethnic groups, how they lived, what products they bought or consumed, what their social status was, and how, even in this remote location, they created their own version of lives exemplifying the era’s Victorian ideals. Readers interested in the archaeology of the West, mining history, and the history of Nevada will find this book fascinating.
 

Twenty Miles From a Match, originally published in 1978, is the autobiography of an indomitable woman and her family’s twenty years of adventures and misadventures in a desert wilderness. In 1908, a venturesome woman named Sarah Olds packed up her brood and went homesteading in the deserts north of Reno, west of Sutcliffe on Pyramid Lake. Her ailing husband said, welcoming her to their new home, "There, old lady. There’s your home, and it’s damn near in the heart of Egypt." Olds tells of the hardships, frustrations, poverty, and other tribulations her family suffered from shortly after the turn of the century until well into the Great Depression. Through it all, however, runs a thread of humor, cheerfulness, and the ability to laugh at adversity. The foreword is by her daughter, Leslie Olds Zurfluh, the fourth of Sarah and A. J. Olds's six children.

Ott provides an excellent ethnography of a French Basque agrarian and sheepherding community. The commune of Sainte-Engrâce extends along a mountain valley in the southeastern corner of Soule, one of the three Basque provences in France. In The Circle of Mountains, Sandra Ott examines the importance of cooperation and reciprocity as the essential basis for the main institutions within this community. These French Basques visualize their community as a circle, and their vision of living in "the circle of mountians," rather than in a valley, reflects their perspective on the society in which they live. The first half of the book incorporates material on history, ecology and economy, and delves deeply into the domestic organization, kinship, and neighborliness of this Basque community. In the second half of the book, the author introduces the males' customary roles as shepherds and cheesemakers. Following a detailed commentary on these vocations, Ott suggests that these seemingly prosaic activities represent the male attempt at symbolic fulfillment of the female procreative and nurturing roles. In a new afterword, Ott discusses developments that have impacted life in the pastoral community of Sainte-Engrâce since the original publication of the book—including the acquisition of telephones and the construction of roads to nearly every home.The Circle of Mountains will be of interest not only to social anthropologists but also to those concerned with the Basque language and culture and to scholars and students of ethnology, international studies, and political science.

During the first half of the twentieth century, the French Basque province of Xiberoa was a place of refuge, conflict, and foreign occupation. With the liberation of France in 1944, many Xiberoans faced new conflicts arising from legal and civic judgments made during Vichy and German occupation. War, Judgment, and Memory in the Basque Borderlands traces the roots of their divided memories of the era to local and official interpretations of judgment, behavior, and justice during those troubled times.
 
In order to understand how the Great War affected the Xiberoan Basques’ perceptions of themselves, Ott contrasts the experiences of people in four different communities located within a fifteen-mile radius. The author also examines how the disruption during the interwar years affected intracommunity relations during the Occupation, the Liberation, and its aftermath. This narrative reveals the diverse ways in which Basques responded to civil war, world war, and displacement, and to one another.

California’s history is rich and diverse, with numerous fascinating stories hidden in its past. Before the discovery of gold in the Sierras, San Francisco (Yerba Buena) and its surroundings comprised a sparsely populated frontier on the edge of the old Spanish realm. After 1848, the area rapidly transformed into a settled urban system as a tremendous influx of prospectors and settlers came to seek their fortune in California. A wave of gold miners, merchants, farmers, politicians, carpenters, and many others from various backgrounds and corners of the world migrated to the area at that time. Interrelated social, geographic, and economic processes led to a very quick metamorphosis from frontier settlement to a firmly established system with ingrained economic patterns.
 
The development of San Francisco’s outlying region from a wilderness into a prosperous village and farming mecca shows how quickly in-migration coupled with economic diversification can establish a stable settlement structure upon the landscape. Otterstrom describes an intricately woven tapestry of interrelated people who were contributing creators of a wide variety of prosperous northern California environs. He uncovers the processes that converted this sleepy post-Mexican outpost into a focal point of nearly hyperactive youthful growth. The narrative follows this crucial story of settlement development until the dawn of the twentieth century, through the interconnected framework of individual and family ingenuity, migration trajectories, and diverse geographical scales.
 
Multiplying individualistic experiences from across far-flung appendages of the Northern California system into larger and larger scales, Otterstrom has achieved a matchless historical and sociological study that will form the basis for any future studies of the area.