front cover of Pare Lorentz and Documentary Film
Pare Lorentz and Documentary Film
Robert L. Snyder
University of Nevada Press, 1993
In October 1990, the Library of Congress announced its list of twenty-five culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant films to be added to the National Film Registry. The River, written and directed by Pare Lorentz in 1937, was inducted along with Scorsese's Raging Bull and Capra's It's a Wonderful Life.

Originally published in 1967, Pare Lorentz and the Documentary Film was the first book devoted exclusively to the works of Lorentz. Robert L. Snyder focuses on the films Lorentz made for the United State Film Service--The River, The Plow That Broke the Plains, and The Fight for Life. With the exception of a few vintage World War I training films, these three films were the first made by the government for general viewing by the American public.

It was Lorentz's idea to produce a series of films about the pressing problems facing the nation during the Great Depression--drought, floods, poverty, and slums. With an initial budget of $6,000 and the enormous drive and energy of a young director who had never made a motion picture, the beignnings were anything but auspicious. The results, however, were sensational and often made national headlines.

In spite of inadequate budgets, bureaucratic red tape, and professional jealousies, Lorentz developed new filming techniques and set new standards in his documentaries. Snyder has written a perceptive account of the production of these classic films and the contemporary reaction to them, along with a critical evaluation of each work. This is an important book for anyone interested in documentary film and the history of the Depression era. 
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front cover of A Passion For Gold
A Passion For Gold
An Autobiography
Ralph J. Roberts
University of Nevada Press, 2002

Ralph J. Roberts is not a household name in Nevada, but it should be—it was he who discovered the Carlin Belt gold deposits that created a major mining boom in the state in the last four decades of the twentieth century. But this discovery was only one episode of his remarkably eventful life. This colorful and personal account of the author's search for his passion—gold—is a story as adventurous as that of any fictional character.

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Pat Mccarran
Political Boss Of Nevada
Jerome E. Edwards
University of Nevada Press, 1982
Although Patrick A. McCarran represented one of the least populated states in the country, he gained a national reputation as a U.S. Senator from Nevada. He entered the political spotlight by locking horns with the Roosevelt and Truman administrations on foreign policy, internal security, and many domestic issues. His strategic use of committee assignments, coupled with a strong backing of loyal, home-state supporters, enabled him to achieve a powerful position in the government.

Within his native state of Nevada, McCarran constructed a machine designed to dominate the state’s political and economic life. This domination, which extended to both political parties, was built on personal favors for constituents, shrewd use of patronage, rewards for friends, and inevitable punishment for those suspected of being enemies. Ironically, the Senator employed the same tactics that others had once used against him to stymie his own early political efforts.

This work discusses the Senator’s background, his rise to power, and his methods of establishing political domination. Personal correspondence, excerpts from speeches, newspaper editorials, and interviews all help bring to life a colorful account of a controversial, driven man who held the levers of political control in Nevada during the early twentieth century.

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The Peoples Of Las Vegas
One City, Many Faces
Jerry L Simich
University of Nevada Press, 2005

Beneath the glitzy surface of the resorts and the seemingly cookie-cutter suburban sprawl of Las Vegas lies a vibrant and diverse ethnic life. People of varied origins make up the population of nearly two million and yet, until now, little mention of the city has been made in studies and discussion of ethnicity or immigration. The Peoples of Las Vegas: One City, Many Faces fills this void by presenting the work of seventeen scholars of history, political science, sociology, anthropology, law, urban studies, cultural studies, literature, social work, and ethnic studies to provide profiles of thirteen of the city’s many ethnic groups. The book’s introduction and opening chapters explore the historical and demographic context of these groups, as well as analyze the economic and social conditions that make Las Vegas so attractive to recent immigrants. Each group is the subject of the subsequent chapters, outlining migration motivations and processes, economic pursuits, cultural institutions and means of transmitting culture, involvement in the broader community, ties to homelands, and recent demographic trends.

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Peregrinations
Walking in American Literature
Amy T Hamilton
University of Nevada Press, 2018
Peregrinate: To travel or wander around from place to place.

The land of the United States is defined by vast distances encouraging human movement and migration on a grand scale. Consequently, American stories are filled with descriptions of human bodies walking through the land.

In Peregrinations, Amy T. Hamilton examines stories told by and about Indigenous American, Euroamerican, and Mexican walkers. Walking as a central experience that ties these texts together—never simply a metaphor or allegory—offers storytellers and authors an elastic figure through which to engage diverse cultural practices and beliefs including Puritan and Catholic teachings, Diné and Anishinaabe oral traditions, Chicanx histories, and European literary traditions.

Hamilton argues that walking bodies alert readers to the ways the physical world—more-than-human animals, trees, rocks, wind, sunlight, and human bodies—has a hand in creating experience and meaning. Through material ecocriticism, a reading practice attentive to historical and ongoing oppressions, exclusions, and displacements, she reveals complex layerings of narrative and materiality in stories of walking human bodies.

This powerful and pioneering methodology for understanding place and identity, clarifies the wide variety of American stories about human relationships with the land and the ethical implications of the embeddedness of humans in the more-than-human world.
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Performance Art
Stories
David Kranes
University of Nevada Press, 2021
Part of our socialization is the urge to perform. We perform images of ourselves for others. For some, the urge is so great and the talent sufficient that we become performers. Performance Art is a series of short stories about performers and performances that are extreme—fire-eaters, knife-throwers, stand-up comedians, escape-artists, weight-loss artists—why we watch them, and why they do what they do. David Kranes dives into the inner lives of these risk-takers, exploring the allures and the costs of “performance.”  His characters are unpredictable, quirky, and sometimes bizarre, but Kranes also reveals their humanity and insecurities. The result is a collection that is engagingly unique, sometimes comical, ironic, heart-tugging, and full of unexpected insights and delights.
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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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Playa Works
The Myth of the Empty
William L. Fox
University of Nevada Press, 2024

In eight brilliant essays, Fox explores many of the major playas of the American West , examining locations as diverse as Nellis Air Force Base and Frenchman Flat, where the federal government has tested experimental aircraft and atomic weaponry; the Great Salt Lake Desert, where land-speed records have been broken; and the Black Rock Desert of Northern Nevada, site of the colorful Burning Man arts festival. He analyzes the geological and climatological conditions that created the playas and the historical role that playas played in the exploration and settlement of the West. And he offers lucid and keenly perceptive discussions of the ways that artists have responded to the playas, from the ancient makers of geoglyphs to the work of contemporary artists who have found inspiration in these enigmatic spaces, including earthworks builder Michael Heizer, photographer Richard Misrach, and painter Michael Moore. The ensemble is a compelling combination of natural history, philosophy, and art criticism, a thoughtful meditation on humankind's aversion to and fascination with the void.

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Played Out on the Strip
The Rise and Fall of Las Vegas Casino Bands
Janis L. McKay
University of Nevada Press, 2016

From 1940 to 1989, nearly every hotel on the Las Vegas Strip employed a full-time band or orchestra. After the late 1980s, when control of the casinos changed hands from independent owners to corporations, almost all of these musicians found themselves unemployed. Played Out on the Strip traces this major shift in the music industry through extensive interviews with former musicians. In 1989, these soon-to-be unemployed musicians went on strike. Janis McKay charts the factors behind this strike, which was precipitated by several corporate hotel owners moving to replace live musicians with synthesizers and taped music, a strategic decision made in order to save money. The results of this transitional period in Las Vegas history were both long-lasting and far-reaching for the entertainment industry. With its numerous oral history interviews and personal perspectives from the era, this book will appeal to readers interested in Las Vegas history, music history, and labor issues.

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front cover of The Players
The Players
The Men Who Made Las Vegas
Jack Sheehan
University of Nevada Press, 1997
Las Vegas was largely shaped by a handful of colorful and astute casino operators who turned a dusty desert town into the gaudy, booming holiday mecca that it is today. The essays in this book introduce us to these players. We discover how early leaders like Cliff Jones, Moe Dalitz, and Benny Binion first grasped Las Vegas’s potential as a center for high-stakes gambling, and we read of mobster Bugsy Siegel’s efforts to bring to reality another man’s dream of a glamorous resort-casino on a then-remote site at the edge of town. Other visionaries like Jay Sarno, Sam Boyd, and Jackie Gaughan helped turn casinos into the islands of fantasy, replete with lavish entertainment spectacles. The arrival of eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes introduced a new style of corporate management --one carried on by Kirk Kerkorian and Steve Wynn to an industry previously led by independent entrepreneurs and their families. In preparing their essays, the authors consulted a wide range of sources and conducted interviews with many of the surviving players and their families and associates. The result is an engaging, highly informative account of a city’s growth through the visions, energies, and decisions of some remarkable gambler-businessmen.
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front cover of Politics, Culture, and Sociability in the Basque Nationalist Party
Politics, Culture, and Sociability in the Basque Nationalist Party
Roland Vazquez
University of Nevada Press, 2010

Until now, social scientists studying Spanish politics have focused on party systems, regime transition, and election analysis, and anthropologists studying Spain have largely neglected its political parties. This book is a pathbreaking work of political anthropology and an ethnographic study of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV). Author Roland Vazquez studies Basque nationalism as not merely a political phenomenon but as a cultural and social one as well. He examines the forces that have shaped the Basque political panorama, the nature of Basque political campaigns, Basque cultural and social movements both inside and outside the explicitly partisan milieu, and the role of other parties in the Basque Country. The study is enhanced by extensive interviews and broad fieldwork among Basque contacts of diverse backgrounds and loyalties. The result is a vivid portrait of political life in the contemporary Basque Country, of the tensions between various nationalist parties and philosophies, and of the way politics are influenced by Basque notions of community, social connections, and national identity. The book also serves as a model for studies of other political and nationalist movements and the cultural and social ties and values that drive them.

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front cover of Population Ecology of Roosevelt Elk
Population Ecology of Roosevelt Elk
Conservation and Management in Redwood National and State Parks
Butch Weckerly
University of Nevada Press, 2017
The Roosevelt elk populate the parks along California’s north coast and comprise the largest land mammals in the parks, some weighing up to 1,200 pounds. They are a stable terrestrial land mammal population, a fixture in the parks, but still require ongoing stewardship and management.
 
In a study spanning more than twenty years, Weckerly made key observations and conducted various investigations under a multitude of ecological conditions. Few authors have dedicated this much time and effort into a single research area. It is a testament to perseverance that his groundbreaking study of the Roosevelt elk was so successful. He was able to document the independent dynamics of several herds of female elk, experience the extinction of one of their subpopulations, and record scientific conclusions in the context of resiliency and redundancy of the elk population.
 
This book will be of considerable interest to those who investigate the ecology of big game animals, including naturalists, hunters, and individuals with particular interest in Redwood State and National Parks. It is an important book that contributes substantially to the persistence and viability of Roosevelt elk in the parks and the surrounding area.
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front cover of Portraits of Basques in the New World
Portraits of Basques in the New World
Richard W. Etulain
University of Nevada Press, 1999

A collection of new essays on notable historic and contemporary Basques of America's Far West that offers a perceptive and lively examination of the lives of one of the West's most resilient and successful ethnic minorities. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the Basque people or those interested in the process of immigration and assimilation: these profiles illustrate how America's Basque immigrants have achieved success in mainstream society while retaining strong ties to their ancient Old World culture.

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front cover of Possible Paradises
Possible Paradises
Basque Emigration to Latin America
Azcona Pastor
University of Nevada Press, 2003
From Columbus's first voyage to "the Indies" in 1492, Basques participated in Spain's American enterprise. Supported by centuries of experience as mariners, shipbuilders, traders, miners, and ironworkers; encouraged toward emigration by restrictive inheritance laws and a land-poor territory; and conditioned by a culture that prized hard work and social solidarity, the Basques were poised to play a significant role in the exploration and development of the New World. The first Basques arrived with Columbus, and well into the twentieth century they continued to arrive seeking livelihood and refuge. 

Possible Paradises, José Manuel Azcona Pastor's engaging and meticulously researched study of Basque emigration to the Americas, is a path breaking work of monumental importance. Ranging over the entire former Spanish American empire from Tierra del Fuego to the U.S. Southwest and covering over five centuries of history, Azcona examines the roles and fates of the Basques who came to the New World. He also studies the impact of the New World on the Basque Country, from the importance in the modern Basque diet of such American foodstuffs as corn and beans to the encouragement given to traditional Basque industries by the colonizers' demand for ships and iron tools. He considers the role of Basques in the Spanish imperial expeditions of exploration and conquest; their participation in transatlantic commerce and communication.

The Basque diaspora, although worldwide in dimension, has had its greatest presence and importance in the Americas. Azcona's pioneering study views the Basque presence in the New World through the broadest possible lens, linking Basque communities and activities from Argentina to the North American West.

Foreword by William A. Douglass. Translation by Roland Vazquez.
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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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front cover of Preparatory Notes for Future Masterpieces
Preparatory Notes for Future Masterpieces
A Novel
Maceo Montoya
University of Nevada Press, 2021
Selected as one of the San Francisco Chronicles' 15 best books of 2021

From critically acclaimed author Maceo Montoya comes an inventive and adventurous satirical novel about a Mexican-American artist’s efforts to fulfill his vision: to paint masterful works of art. His plans include a move to Paris to join the ranks of his artistic hero, Gustave Courbet—except it’s 1943, and he’s stuck in the backwoods of New Mexico. Penniless and prone to epileptic fits, even his mother thinks he’s crazy.

Ernie Lobato has just inherited his deceased uncle’s manuscript and drawings. At the urging of his colleague, an activist and history buff (Lorraine Rios), Ernie sends the materials to a professor of Chicanx literature (Dr. Samuel Pizarro). Throughout the novel, Dr. Pizarro shares his insights and comments on the uncle’s legacy in a series of annotations to his text and illustrations.

As Ernie’s uncle battles a world that is unkind to “starving artists,” he runs into other tormented twentieth-century artists, writers, and activists with ambitions to match his own: a young itinerant preacher (Reies López Tijerina); the “greatest insane artist” (Martín Ramirez); and Oscar Zeta Acosta who is hellbent on self-destruction. Will the fortuitous encounters with these prophetic figures result in his own genius being recognized? Or will his
uncompromising nature consign him to what he fears most?

Told through a combination of words and images in the tradition of classic works such as Don Quixote and Alice in Wonderland, Preparatory Notes for Future Masterpieces features fifty-one vivid black-and-white pen drawings. This complex and engaging story also doubles as literary criticism, commenting on how outsiders’ stories fit into the larger context of the Chicanx literary canon. A unique and multilayered story that embraces both contradiction and possibility, it also sheds new light on the current state of Chicanx literature while, at the same time, contributing to it.

Propulsive, humorous, and full of life, this candid novel will be loved not only by Beat fiction fans but by contemporary fiction lovers as well.
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front cover of Preserving The Glory Days
Preserving The Glory Days
Ghost Towns And Mining Camps Of Nye County, Nevada
Shawn Hall
University of Nevada Press, 1999

Nye County is Nevada’s largest and least populated county, but it is also the site of many of the state’s most colorful ghost towns and mining camps. The county’s economy throughout its history has been largely based on its mines--first, exploiting veins of gold and silver, and more recently deposits of raw materials for modern industry, such as molybdenum and barite. It was here that famous boomtowns like Tonopah and Rhyolite sprang up after the discovery of nearby lodes brought in rushes of prospectors and the merchants who supported them. But the county includes many smaller, shorter-lived camps and numerous abandoned stagecoach and railroad stops associated with defunct mining operations.This book offers a lively, informative record of Nevada’s isolated interior. Hall first published a guide to Nye County’s ghost towns in 1981. Since then, he has continued his research into the county’s past and has uncovered much new information and corrected some errors. To prepare this revised and greatly expanded edition, he revisited all 175 sites recorded earlier and has added more than 20 previously unlisted sites.

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front cover of A Private War
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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Protecting the Spanish Woman
Gender Identity and Empowerment in María de Zayas's Works
Xabier Granja Ibarreche
University of Nevada Press, 2023
An important contribution to the study of women writers.

María de Zayas is unique in the seventeenth century as the only Spanish woman to write a collection of exemplary novels whose quality is often compared to Miguel de Cervantes’ masterful works. Her two main collections of short stories, Novelas amorosas y ejemplares and Desengaños amorosos, encompass a social critique based on literary fiction that exposes flaws in the idealized archetypes of masculine identity in early modern Spain. Zayas’s stories redefine women’s patriarchal disadvantage as a tool to expose the ways in which early modern Spanish women could be empowered to counteract men’s discursive and political authority, which they use to unfairly maintain their own social privilege.
 
Xabier Granja Ibarreche explores how Zayas defies Spanish hegemony by manipulating and transforming the ideals of courtly masculinity that had been popularized by conduct manuals and the traits they specified for appropriate noble comportment. In doing so, Zayas elaborates a nonofficial discourse throughout plots that subvert patriarchal hierarchies: she rearticulates the existing ideological order to empower women who are no longer willing to remain silent and oppressed by masculine domination after centuries of failing to attain a sufficiently self-sufficient political position to ascend in the social hierarchy. By inverting the male gaze that assumes masculinity as a preeminent identity, Zayas subverts the patriarchal subject/masculine, object/feminine order and destabilizes manly superiority as a basic universal reality, thereby empowering and unshackling Spanish women to liberate Iberian culture from the repressive and pernicious future she forebodes.
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Psychotherapy As Religion
The Civil Divine In America
William M. Epstein
University of Nevada Press, 2006

A provocative look at America on the couch.In Psychotherapy as Religion, William Epstein sets out to debunk claims that psychotherapy provides successful clinical treatment for a wide range of personal and social problems. He argues that the practice is not a science at all but rather the civil religion of America, reflecting the principles of radical self-invention and self-reliance deeply embedded in the psyche of the nation. Epstein begins by analyzing a number of clinical studies conducted over the past two decades that purport to establish the effectiveness of psychotherapeutic treatments. He finds that each study violates in some way the standard criteria of scientific credibility and that the field has completely failed to establish objective procedures and measurements to assess clinical outcomes. Epstein exposes psychotherapy’s deep roots in the religious and intellectual movements of the early nineteenth century by demonstrating striking parallels between various types of therapy and such popular practices as Christian Science and spiritualism. Psychotherapy has taken root in our culture because it so effectively reflects our national faith in individual responsibility for social and personal problems. It thrives as the foundation of American social welfare policy, blaming deviance and misery on deficiencies of character rather than on the imperfections of society and ignoring the influence of unequal and deficient social conditions while requiring miscreants to undergo the moral reeducation that psychotherapy represents. This is a provocative, brilliantly argued look at America on the couch. Psychotherapy as Religion is essential reading for anyone interested in the history and current state of mental health.

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Purshia
The Wild And Bitter Roses
James A. Young
University of Nevada Press, 2002

A useful and complete summary of all the scientific information available on one of the most significant plant species in the western and intermountain regions. Among the plant species of the great Basin rangeland, the Purshia—ancient members of the rose family evolved to survive the aridity and temperature extremes of this harsh region—are one of the most important. This book-length study of this key plant species provides a comprehensive examination of the biology and ecology of the species and region.

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