This work examines the interplay between the city of Sacramento and the Catholic Church since the 1850s. Avella uses Sacramento as a case study of the role of religious denominations in the development of the American West. In Sacramento, as in other western urban areas, churches brought civility and various cultural amenities, and they helped to create an atmosphere of stability so important to creating a viable urban community. At the same time, churches often had to shape themselves to the secularizing tendencies of western cities while trying to remain faithful to their core values and practices.

Besides the numerous institutions that the Church sponsored, it brought together a wide spectrum of the city’s diverse ethnic populations and offered them several routes to assimilation. Catholic Sacramentans have always played an active role in government and in the city’s economy, and Catholic institutions provided a matrix for the creation of new communities as the city spread into neighboring suburbs. At the same time, the Church was forced to adapt itself to the needs and demands of its various ethnic constituents, particularly the flood of Spanish-speaking newcomers in the late twentieth century.

Noted writer and photographer Stephen Trimble mixes eloquent accounts of personal experiences with clear explication of natural history. His photographs capture some of the most spectacular but least-known scenery in the western states. The Great Basin Desert sweeps from the Sierra to the Rockies, from the Snake River Plain to the Mojave Desert. "Biogeography" would be one way to sum up Trimble's focus on the land: what lives where, and why. He introduces concepts of desert ecology and discusses living communities of animals and plants that band Great Basin mountains—from the exhilarating emptiness of dry lake-beds to alpine regions at the summits of the 13,000-foot Basin ranges.

This is the best general introduction to the ecology and spirit of the Great Basin, a place where "the desert almost seems to mirror the sky in size," where mountains hold "ravens, bristlecone pines, winter stillness—and unseen, but satisfying, the possibility of bighorn sheep." Trimble's photographs come from the backcountry of this rugged land, from months of exploring and hiking the Great Basin wilderness in all seasons; and his well-chosen words come from a rare intimacy with the West.

Since its publication in 1996, The Sagebrush State has served as the text for the required course on Nevada’s history and constitution given at the state’s colleges and universities. The third edition of this work is updated through 2005 to include information on the elections of 2002 and 2004 and two very controversial sessions of the legislature. The full text of the state constitution is provided for reference in an appendix and includes extensive annotations that note and explain amendments and other changes made to the original 1864 document.

Nevada’s politics have been formed in large measure by its turbulent history and harsh environment. Bowers’ concise volume explains the dynamics of this process, which is strikingly unique among the fifty states. This is a readable and insightful explanation of how Nevada’s history has formed its political culture, and how its government works today. The Sagebrush State includes the full text of the state constitution, with extensive annotations of all amendments to the original 1864 document. The Sagebrush State serves as a text for the study of Nevada’s history and constitution, which is a graduation requirement at the state’s colleges and universities. The fourth edition of this work is updated through 2012 to include information on the elections of 2010 and 2012 and recent controversial sessions of the Legislature.

Nevada’s politics are in large measure the result of its turbulent history and harsh environment. Michael W. Bowers’ concise volume explains the dynamics of the political formation process, which is strikingly unique among the fifty states.  Even today, Nevada is unlike the other states in its politics and culture: it’s economically right, yet libertarian, the home of widespread gaming and a 24/7 lifestyle, has a high percentage of federally-owned lands, and has one of the highest rates of urbanism in the U.S., yet is often governed by rural legislators.

This comprehensive and insightful explanation discusses how Nevada’s history has shaped its political culture, and how its government operates today. The Sagebrush State serves as a highly readable and accessible text for the study of Nevada’s political history and constitution, which is a graduation requirement at the state’s colleges and universities. The fifth edition is updated through 2017 and includes the full text of the state constitution with extensive annotations of all amendments to the original 1864 document.

Nevada’s politics are in large measure the result of its turbulent history and harsh environment. Michael W. Bowers’s concise volume explains the dynamics of the state’s political formation process, which is strikingly unique among the fifty states. Even today, Nevada is unlike the other states in its politics and culture: economically right, yet libertarian and home to widespread gaming and a 24/7 industry. It has a high percentage of federally owned lands and one of the highest rates of urbanism in the United States, yet is often dominated by rural legislators. 

This comprehensive and insightful explanation discusses how Nevada’s history has shaped its political culture, and how its government operates today. The Sagebrush State serves as a highly readable and accessible text for the study of Nevada’s political history and constitution, which is a graduation requirement at the state’s colleges and universities. The sixth edition is updated through 2020 and includes the latest changes in the selection process of municipal court judges in the state, the resurgence of the Democrats after their losses in 2016, and the full text of the state constitution with extensive annotations of all amendments to the original 1864 document. It also examines the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic downturn on the state’s budget.

Master storyteller Don Waters returns to the desert in his third book set in the American Southwest. With the gothic sensibility of Flannery O’Connor and emotional delicacy of Raymond Carver, these nine contemporary stories deftly explore the lives of characters losing or clinging to a fleeting faith and struggling to find something meaningful to believe in beneath overpowering desert skies.

Soldiers, seekers, priests, prisoners, and surfers pursue their fate amid bizarre, sometimes overwhelming circumstances. In “La Luz de Jesús,” a gutless Los Angeles screenwriter, a believer in nothing but the god of Hollywood, must reorient after he encounters a group of penitents in New Mexico’s Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The decorated soldier in “Española” faces more chaos back home than he did during his tour in Iraq. And “The Saints of Rattlesnake Mountain” pairs a “trustee” prison inmate and a wild mustang horse, both wards of the state of Nevada, as they fumble toward a spiritual truth.

These stories capture the spirit of a region and its people. Once again Waters assembles an unconventional cast of characters, capturing their foibles and imperfections, and always rendering them with compassion as these modern-day martyrs and spiritually haunted survivors strive for some kind of redemption.

Ingenious, sometimes forbidding, often absurd, and altogether original, The Saints of Rattlesnake Mountain is a stirring tribute to the lives, loves, and hopes of the faithful and the dispossessed.

In 1965, soil and climatic studies indicated that the Santa Ynez and Santa Maria valleys of Santa Barbara County, California, offered suitable conditions for growing high-quality wine grapes. Thus was launched a revival of the area’s two-centuries-old wine industry that by 1995 made Santa Barbara County an internationally prominent wine region. Salud! traces the evolution of Santa Barbara viticulture in the larger context of California’s history and economy, offering insight into one of the state’s most important industries. California has produced wine since Spanish missionaries first planted grapes to make sacramental wines, but it was not until the late twentieth century that changing consumer tastes and a flourishing national economy created the conditions that led to the state’s wine boom. Historian Victor W. Geraci uses the Santa Barbara wine industry as a case study to analyze the history and evolution of American viticulture from its obscure colonial beginnings to its current international acclaim. As elsewhere in the state, Santa Barbara County vintners faced the multiple challenges of selecting grape varieties appropriate to their unique conditions, protecting their crops from disease and insects, developing local wineries, and of marketing their products in a highly competitive national and international market. Geraci gives careful attention to all the details of this production: agriculture, science, and technology; capitalization and investment; land-use issues; politics; the specter posed by the behemoth Napa and multinational wine corporations; and the social and personal consequences of creating and supporting an industry vulnerable to so many natural and economic crises. His extensive research includes interviews with many industry professionals. California is today one of the world’s major wine producers, and Santa Barbara County contributes significantly to the volume and renowned quality of this wine production. Salud! offers a highly engaging overview of an industry in which the ancient romance of wine too often obscures a complex and diverse modern vintibusiness that for better, and sometimes for worse, has shaped the regions it dominates.

San Francisco is known and loved around the world for its iconic man-made structures, such as the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, and Transamerica Pyramid. Yet its Civic Center, with the grandest collection of monumental municipal buildings in the United States, is often overlooked, drawing less global and local interest, despite its being an urban planning marvel featuring thirteen government office and cultural buildings.

In The San Francisco Civic Center, James Haas tells the complete story of San Francisco’s Civic Center and how it became one of the most complete developments envisioned by any American city. Originally planned and designed by John Galen Howard in 1912, the San Francisco Civic Center is considered in both design and materials one of the finest achievements of the American reformist City Beautiful movement, an urban design movement that began more than a century ago.

Haas meticulously unravels the Civic Center’s story of perseverance and dysfunction, providing an understanding and appreciation of this local and national treasure. He discusses why the Civic Center was built, how it became central to the urban planning initiatives of San Francisco in the early twentieth century, and how the site held onto its founders’ vision despite heated public debates about its function and achievement. He also delves into the vision for the future and related national trends in city planning and the architectural and art movements that influenced those trends.

Riddled with inspiration and leadership as well as controversy, The San Francisco Civic Center, much like the complex itself, is a stunning manifestation of the confident spirit of one of America’s most dynamic and creative cities.
 

Sand in a Whirlwind is a dramatic account of the events surrounding hostilities between settlers and Pyramid Paiutes in the spring of 1860. Thirty years after its publication Ferol Egan’s now classic tale continues to enlighten and engage readers.

2020 Winner of the Southwest Book Awards
2020 Spur Awards Finalist Contemporary Nonfiction, Western Writers of America 

The Grand Canyon has been saved from dams three times in the last century. Unthinkable as it may seem today, many people promoted damming the Colorado River in the canyon during the early twentieth century as the most feasible solution to the water and power needs of the Pacific Southwest. These efforts reached their climax during the 1960s when the federal government tried to build two massive hydroelectric dams in the Grand Canyon. Although not located within the Grand Canyon National Park or Monument, they would have flooded lengthy, unprotected reaches of the canyon and along thirteen miles of the park boundary.

Saving Grand Canyon tells the remarkable true story of the attempts to build dams in one of America’s most spectacular natural wonders. Based on twenty-five years of research, this fascinating ride through history chronicles a hundred years of Colorado River water development, demonstrates how the National Environmental Policy Act came to be, and challenges the myth that the Sierra Club saved the Grand Canyon. It also shows how the Sierra Club parlayed public perception as the canyon’s savior into the leadership of the modern environmental movement after the National Environmental Policy Act became law.

The tale of the Sierra Club stopping the dams has become so entrenched—and so embellished—that many historians, popular writers, and filmmakers have ignored the documented historical record. This epic story puts the events from 1963–1968 into the broader context of Colorado River water development and debunks fifty years of Colorado River and Grand Canyon myths.

The history of Lake Tahoe begins with the Washoe Indians who resided on its shores for thousands of years, with minimal impact on the landscape. The relatively brief American history at Lake Tahoe began in the mid-nineteenth century. Though awestruck by its beauty, the new arrivals were also intent on harvesting its abundant resources. In a mere half century, the basin’s forests and fisheries were destroyed, the lake’s pristine clarity dramatically reduced.

Left alone, nature healed itself, and by the 1960s mature forests once again surrounded the lake and its water clarity improved, with visibility more than one hundred feet deep. However, Tahoe’s wonders brought a new kind of threat: millions of annual visitors and incessant development, including ski resorts and casinos. Saving Lake Tahoe looks at the interaction through the years between human activities and Tahoe’s natural ecosystems. It is a dramatic story of ecological disasters and near misses, political successes and failures. Utilizing primary sources and interviews with key figures, Makley provides a meticulously researched account of the battles surrounding the management of the Tahoe basin.

Makley takes the story up to the present, describing the formation and evolution of a new type of governing body, the bistate Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, and groundbreaking efforts to utilize science in establishing policy. He depicts the passionate fights between those who seek to preserve the environment and advocates of individual property rights. Although Tahoe remains unique in its splendor, readers will understand why, with continued pressure for development, reversing environmental deterioration and improving the lake water’s clarity remain elusive goals.

In 1968 the residents of Lovell, Wyoming began the work of saving the Pryor Mountain Mustang, a breed of horse with a genetic link dating back to the sixteenth-century Spanish conquistadores’ horses. In this moving case study, Christine Reed shows how, through a grassroots campaign, these residents championed the creation of the first federal public wild horse range. Crucial to this provocative analysis of local-federal cooperation is the relationship that grew between the Lovell advocates, the Bureau of Land Management, and the National Park Service. Long before there were federal laws passed to protect wild horse herds across the western states, the Pryor Mountain Mustang was preserved through the cooperative efforts of local residents and federal officials.

Saving the Pryor Mountain Mustang explores the unique and ongoing relationship between locals and the federal government, highlighting the Lovell citizens’ philosophy of cooperation instead of the typical mistrust that exists between wild horse advocates and federal agencies. The book provides a rich analysis of how a determined group of people saved an endangered wild horse herd. The book will have wide appeal to wild horse activists, scholars of local and federal governance, and western history enthusiasts.

Deep in the desolate Mojave Desert in Nevada’s extreme southern tip lies a small mining town called Searchlight. This meticulously researched book by Searchlight’s most distinguished native son recounts the colorful history of the town and the lives of the hardy people who built it and sustained a community in one of the least hospitable environments in the United States. Its story encompasses both Nevada’s early twentieth-century mining boom and the phenomenal growth of southern Nevada after World War II. Searchlight is a valuable contribution to the history of Nevada and a lively account of life in the forbidding depths of the Mojave Desert.<br> <br>

Fire is a fearsome constant in the America West. As the author David J. Strohmaier notes, "Whether we have tended a campfire along Oregon's Deschutes River in March, engaged the advancing front of a Great Basin wildfire in the torrid heat of August, or watched fire settle into the subdued, smoldering leaf piles of October, all of our lives, to one degree or another, are bracketed by fire." In The Seasons of Fire, Strohmaier effectively blends nature writing, personal essay, and philosophical analysis as he deliberately crosses disciplinary boundaries. He discusses the "moral" dimensions of fire—not only whether fires are good, bad, or indifferent phenomena, but also how fire, more generally understood, shapes meaning for human life. The consequences of discussing the moral side of fire speak directly to the contours of the human soul, and to our sense of our place on the land. Strohmaier, a long-term firefighter himself, includes accurate and sometimes gut-wrenching descriptions of the firefighter's experience.

The author of The Desert, the book that made the American landscape accessible to the mainstream mind, was much less like his fellow environmental prophets John Muir and Henry David Thoreau than he would have had us believe. Van Dyke claimed to have wandered "alone on horseback for thousands of miles through the American Southwest and northern Mexico," as readers of The Desert—now in the millions since the book was published in 1901—were told. He did not. In The Secret Life of John C. Van Dyke, Teague and Wild unmask the desert saint with Van Dyke’s own recently discovered letters. These letters depict a privileged, patrician, and pampered member of the upper-class. His incriminating correspondence reveals that he saw most of the desert from plush railroad cars and grand hotel rooms. In the introduction, the editors clear up many misconceptions scholars currently hold about Van Dyke’s ecological principles, about his outdoorsmanship, and about his trip through the desert itself. As the centennial of the publication of The Desert approaches, this lively collection of letters helps set the record straight. The John C. Van Dyke unveiled in The Secret Life is a more varied character than we had supposed—still worthy of much admiration for his remarkable accomplishments, but still mysterious, and not the man we thought him to be.

Digging mineral wealth from the ground dates to prehistoric times, and Europeans pursued mining in the Americas from the earliest colonial days. Prior to the Civil War, little mining was deep enough to require maps. However, the major finds of the mid-nineteenth century, such as the Comstock Lode, were vastly larger than any before in America. In Seeing Underground, Nystrom argues that, as industrial mining came of age in the United States, the development of maps and models gave power to a new visual culture and allowed mining engineers to advance their profession, gaining authority over mining operations from the miners themselves.

Starting in the late nineteenth century, mining engineers developed a new set of practices, artifacts, and discourses to visualize complex, pitch-dark three-dimensional spaces. These maps and models became necessary tools in creating and controlling those spaces. They made mining more understandable, predictable, and profitable. Nystrom shows that this new visual culture was crucial to specific developments in American mining, such as implementing new safety regulations after the Avondale, Pennsylvania fire of 1869 killed 110 men and boys; understanding complex geology, as in the rich ores of Butte, Montana; and settling high-stakes litigation, such as the Tonopah, Nevada, Jim Butler v. West End lawsuit, which reached the US Supreme Court.

Nystrom demonstrates that these neglected artifacts of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have much to teach us today. The development of a visual culture helped create a new professional class of mining engineers and changed how mining was done. Seeing Undergound is the winner of the 2015 Mining History Association’s Clark Spence Award for the best book on mining history.

Howard Cannon (1912 - 2002) represented Nevada in the U.S. Senate from 1958 until 1982 and acquired a reputation as one of its most productive and influential members. Because he was a modest man more comfortable with hard work than self-aggrandizement, he was also one of its most under-appreciated. Nonetheless, Cannon influenced many major changes in American politics and policies during his time in office.

Born to a devout Mormon family in a small farming community in southwest Utah, Cannon served in the Army Air Force during World War II and emerged from the war as a hero. Soon he was part of the postwar migration of ambitious, adventurous Americans to the booming desert city of Las Vegas, where he practiced law and entered local politics. In 1958 he was elected to the U.S. Senate and joined a group of influential young Democratic senators who were to play a major role in shaping the country’s future. His service on the Aeronautical and Space Sciences Committee and the Armed Services Committee led to major changes in the air travel industry, including deregulation, and to increased support for national military preparedness.

A hundred miles northwest of Los Angeles, Sespe Creek flows through some of the wildest territory in California. A mostly roadless expanse of chaparral and mixed forest, in many places nearly inaccessible even on foot, the Sespe is the untamed heart of Southern California, a wilderness on the edge of one of the world’s major metropolitan developments. To nature writer and outdoorsman John Bradley Monsma, the Sespe is both his place of escape and the place “that teaches me to be fully alive.” In The Sespe Wild, Monsma shares his exploration of this unique and fantastic region. His attention ranges from the physical Sespe, examined on foot or by kayak, to the subsurface geology that shaped it, the Chumash people who first occupied it, and the impact of Spanish and then American settlers. He also considers the Sespe through the eyes of some of its nonhuman populations—the nearly extinct condors, the vanished grizzlies, the mountain sheep, the steelhead trout, the red-legged frogs. Through the metaphor of the river, he ponders the tensions between preservation and overmanagement of wildlife and wilderness areas, the ecology of fire, the intricate connections between species, and the almost miraculous ways that the Sespe has escaped the fate of other Southern California streams, dammed or carved up into canals by development. “To consider this place,” Monsma says, “is to call up issues crucial wherever wilderness and cities meet: recreational impacts on wildlife habitat, the dynamics of accessibility and protection, the physical and psychological need for healthy ecosystems, threats of development and resource extraction.” Monsma’s engaging text addresses the Sespe’s losses and its ongoing pattern of creation and renewal, leading us through rich layers of natural and cultural history in a narrative as colorful and exciting as a day on a Sespe trail. The Sespe, existing at the intersection of ecological processes and human ideals of wilderness, reminds us that nature and culture have always intermingled, and that the past and present, animal and human, “natural” and “unnatural” are ultimately and irrevocably inseparable.

Nevada’s capital city is today a charming, modern community, with an unusually eventful past. A Short History of Carson City traces its history from its origin as a mid-nineteenth-century trading post to its rise as the political center of Nevada. Here are the hard-working citizens and colorful characters, the political and business decisions, and the evolving economy that helped shape it. This is the first comprehensive historical account of a thoroughly modern state capital with its roots deep in Nevada’s turbulent past.

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.
 

Lake Tahoe is one of the scenic wonders of the American West, a sapphire jewel that attracts millions of visitors each year. But the lake drew Native Americans to its summer shores for millennia, as well as more recent fortune hunters, scientists, and others.

A Short History of Lake Tahoe recounts the long, fascinating history of Lake Tahoe. Author Michael J. Makley examines the geology and natural history of the lake and introduces the people who shaped its history, including the Washoe Indians and such colorful characters as Mark Twain and legendary teamster Hank Monk, and later figures like entertainer Frank Sinatra and Olympic skier Julia Mancuso. He also covers the development of the lake's surrounding valley, including the impacts of mining, logging, and tourism, and the economic, political, and social controversies regarding the use and misuse of the lake's resources.

Generously illustrated with historic photographs, this book is an engaging introduction to one of the most magnificent sites in the world. It also illuminates the challenges of protecting natural beauty and a fragile environment while preserving public access and a viable economy in the surrounding communities.

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.

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.

This completely revised and updated edition of A Short History of Reno provides an entertaining and informative account of Reno’s remarkably colorful history. Richard Moreno discusses Reno’s efforts, from its early beginnings in the 1850s to the present day, to reinvent itself as a recreation, entertainment, education, and technology hub. Moreno looks at the gamblers, casino builders, and performers who helped create the world-famous gaming industry, and he considers the celebrities who came to end unhappy marriages back when Reno was “the divorce capital of the world.”

Moreno brings the city’s history up-to-date with coverage of the businesspeople and civic leaders who helped make Reno an attraction that still lures millions of visitors each year. Today’s travelers and residents explore Reno’s flamboyant heart and scenic wonders, topics the author examines in an accessible and lively fashion.

Sonoma is one of Northern California’s most desirable places to live and a popular tourist destination, combining small-town charm, a colorful past, and its current role as the hub of one of the world’s premier wine-producing regions. A Short History of Sonoma traces its past from the Native American peoples who first inhabited the valley, proceeding through the establishment of a mission by Spanish priests, the Bear Flag Revolt that began California’s movement to become part of the United States, the foundation of what would become a celebrated wine industry, and its role today as the center of a sophisticated and highly envied food and wine culture.

The book also addresses such topics as the development of local ranching and businesses and of transportation links to San Francisco that helped to make Sonoma and the surrounding Valley of the Moon a popular location for summer homes and resorts. It discusses the role of the nearby hot springs in attracting visitors and permanent residents, including people seeking cures for various ailments. There are also accounts of some of the famous people who lived in or near Sonoma and helped establish its mystique, including Mexican general Mariano Vallejo, the town’s first leader; Hungarian winemaker Agoston Haraszthy, who first saw the region’s potential for producing superior wines; and writers Jack London and M. F. K. Fisher, who made their homes in the Valley of the Moon, drawn by its beauty and bucolic lifestyle.

A Short History of Sonoma is generously illustrated with vintage photographs. It is a delightful account of one of America’s most charming towns and its evolution from rowdy frontier settlement to the paragon of sophisticated living that it is today.

Founded in 1859, Virginia City quickly became world famous for its extraordinary prosperity. Over the next two decades, the mines of “the Richest City on Earth” yielded millions in gold and silver. The newly wealthy built mansions and churches, opera houses and schools, with furniture, fashions, and entertainment imported from Europe and the Far East. Here young Samuel Clemens, reporting for the Territorial Enterprise in 1863, first called himself Mark Twain. At its height Virginia City was a magnet for immigrants and the world leader in technological innovations in mining.
 
The city’s story did not end when the Comstock Lode played out. Beginning in the 1930s, bohemian artists, literati, and tourists were intrigued by this remnant of the Old West. The leader of Manhattan’s café society, Lucius Beebe, moved here and relaunched the Territorial Enterprise in 1950. Television’s most popular western from 1959 to 1973, Bonanza, located its fictional Ponderosa Ranch nearby. In the summer of 1965, a handful of Bay Area musicians, including Big Brother and the Holding Company, performed at the Red Dog Saloon and launched psychedelic rock, part of the inspiration for a defining decade of youth culture. Today it is both a National Historic Landmark District and a living community. Visitors come to enjoy its saloons and restaurants, admire its architecture, and learn from its museums and exhibits. A Short History of Virginia City will enhance their experience and will also be enjoyed by anyone interested in the history of Nevada, mining, and the Old West.

• Includes an illustrated walking tour describing more than thirty buildings and sites

Mozingo presents the life histories of more than sixty species of both common and unusual shrubs, and discusses how shrubs grow, reproduce, and adapt to the extreme weather conditions that are part of daily life in the Great Basin. Drawings by Christine Stetter.

Nevada has changed dramatically over the past quarter century, and in this third edition of The Silver State, renowned historian James W. Hulse recounts the major events—historical, political, and social—that have shaped our state. Hulse’s cohesive approach offers students and general readers an accessible account of Nevada’s colorful history. The new edition highlights the social and political changes that have occurred since the original publication of The Silver State in 1991. Hulse discusses the impact of a growing population; changes in the economy and education system; expanding roles of women; recent developments in state politics, including the 2003 legislative session; the influence of Nevada’s growing ethnic population and increasingly divergent demographic groups; and the impact of federal policies, including President George W. Bush’s 2002 decision to authorize the opening of a nuclear-waste depository at Yucca Mountain. In addition, all the recommended reading lists have been updated. The Silver State explores many dimensions of the Nevada experience and its peoples. This book will inspire readers to take another look at the rich cultural heritage and eventful history of Nevada, the Silver State.

The indigo skies and lush vegetation of the contemporary West Coast belie the damaged souls and desperate alienation that lurk behind fading stucco walls and off the endless highways. The lives of women on the edge and beyond the margins have seldom been explored with as much power or insight as in these brilliant stories by award-winning novelist and poet Kate Braverman. In a world without succor, Braverman’s characters grope for meaning and solutions to their dilemmas. Our Lady of the 43 Sorrows must meet the bizarre needs of her severely brain-damaged mother as her own career as a soap-opera actress declines. The protagonist of "Pagan Night" waits with her unnamed and unwanted infant in a shabby zoo in Idaho while her partner buys dope and makes plans to reconstitute their failed rock band. And the precocious, awkward adolescent narrator of the title story watches as her elegant grandmother confronts the illness that will soon end the colorful life she has so enjoyed. Abandonment, in these wrenching stories, comes in many forms, and freedom is elusive and sometimes fraught with pain and terror. Braverman’s language is ripe, intense, as vivid as the sun-drenched California landscape, and her characters are contrary, unpredictable, and unforgettable. These haunting stories evoke the glittering expectations and shattering disappointments of the postmodern West.

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.

Translated by Cameron Watson and William A. Douglass. Foreword by William A. Douglass. The Basque people have preserved their ethnic identity and sense of themselves as a separate community despite centuries of repression, diaspora, and economic and social upheaval—one of the most remarkable achievements in the history of the phenomenon we call nationalism. In The Social Roots of Basque Nationalism, sociologist Alfonso Pérez-Agote addresses the social mechanisms that Basques employed to sustain their ethnic identity under the Franco Regime and demonstrates how persecution actually encouraged the extension of Basque nationalist consciousness. He also reveals how state political pressure radicalized one element of the Basque-nationalist movement, resulting in the formation of ETA, an armed terrorist wing that itself became a mechanism for extending nationalist consciousness. Finally, he examines the subsequent changes in Basque nationalism following Franco’s death and the extension of democracy in Spain, which resulted in the institutionalization of the movement into an autonomous political power. This work is based in part on interviews and polls with informants in the Basque Country and abroad, eliciting such data as the role that family, education, social contacts, and religious environment play in the evolution of political attitudes; the place of violence in the Basque world view and contemporary political culture; regional variations in Basque nationalism; and the factors that contributed to the resilience of Basque nationalism in adapting to new historical conditions. The result is a sophisticated discussion of the various ways in which Basque social reality is constituted and how this reality helps to create political culture. Because Pérez-Agote situates his discussion within the broader frameworks of ethnic identity, group dynamics, and the nature of nationalism, the book makes a significant contribution not only to our understanding of the Basques but to the broader study of the evolution of nationalism and the nation-state, political violence, and the complicated transition of any society from dictatorship to democracy.

Urza discusses the genesis of the National Basque Monument to the Basque Sheepherder that is located in Reno, Nevada. He also describes the competition held to determine the monument's design and the debates arising from the modern sculpture created by renowned Basque artist Nestor Basterrextea. Urza examines the arguments of those who favored the selection of a figurative, traditional symbol and those who preferred a modern, forward-looking symbol. He utilizes this discussion to explore the evolution of Basque ethnicity and its relationship to society.

Speaking Through the Aspens analyzes the content of thousands of arboglyphs in the mountains of Nevada and California by topic—language, politics, the Basque homeland, the sheepherd’s life, sex, and pictorial themes. In addition, author Mallea-Olaetxe has examined such sheepherder artifacts as sheep camps and bread ovens, conducted extensive interviews with former herders and sheep company personnel, and undertaken research in immigration and other records. The result is a highly original work of history—a detailed account of the lives of Basque sheepherders in the American West. For the first time, these men who contributed so much to the development of the region, many of whom went on to establish the West’s thriving Basque community, speak for themselves about their experiences. Enhanced by numerous illustrations, this book is history at its most engrossing, essential reading for scholars and anyone curious about the arboglyph phenomenon.

The history of St. Thomas, Nevada, the remains of which today lay under the high water mark of Lake Mead, begins in 1865 with Mormon missionaries sent by Brigham Young to the Moapa Valley to grow cotton. In 1871 the boundary of Utah territory was shifted east by one degree longitude, and the town became part of Nevada. New settlers moved in, miners and farmers, interacting with the Mormons and native Paiutes. The building of Hoover Dam doomed the small settlement, yet a striking number of people still have connections to a town that ceased to exist three-quarters of a century ago. Today, the ruins of this ghost town, just sixty miles east of Las Vegas, are visible when the waters of Lake Mead are low. Located in a national recreation area, the National Park Service today preserves and interprets the remains of St. Thomas as a significant historical site. Touching as it does upon on early explorers, Mormons, criminals, railroad and auto transportation, mining, water, state and federal relations, and more, St. Thomas, Nevada offers much to Mormon and regional historians, as well as general readers of western history.

Starting with Goodbye begins with loss and ends with love, as a midlife daughter rediscovers her enigmatic father after his death. Lisa has little time for grief, but when her dead dad drops in for “conversations,” his absent presence invites Lisa to examine why the parent she had turned away from in life now holds her spellbound.

Lisa reconsiders the affluent upbringing he financed (filled with horses, lavish vacations, bulging closets), and the emotional distance that grew when he retired to Las Vegas and she remained in New Jersey where she and her husband earn moderate incomes. She also confronts death rituals, navigates new family dynamics, while living both in memory and the unfolding moment.

In this brutally honest yet compelling portrayal and tribute, Lisa searches for meaning, reconciling the Italian-American father—self-made textile manufacturer who liked newspapers, smoking, Las Vegas craps tables, and solitude—with the complex man she discovers influenced everything, from career choice to spouse.

By forging a new father-daughter “relationship,” grief is transformed to hopeful life-affirming redemption. In poignant, often lyrical prose, this powerful, honest book proves that when we dare to love the parent who challenged us most, it’s never too late.

Wallace Stegner, a major American novelist and conservationist, is interviewed by Etulain, a renowned Western scholar, in a series of discussions. Originally published in 1983 and entitled Conversations with Wallace Stegner on Western History and Literature, this book is the ultimate Stegner interview. New foreword by Stewart Udall.

Between 1840 and 1869, thousands of people crossed the American continent looking for a new life in the West. Success Depends on the Animals explores the relationships and encounters that these emigrants had with animals, both wild and domestic, as they traveled the Overland Trail. In the longest migration of people in history, the overlanders were accompanied by thousands of work animals such as horses, oxen, mules, and cattle. These travelers also brought dogs and other companion animals, and along the way confronted unknown wild animals.

Ahmad’s study is the first to explore how these emigrants became dependent upon the animals that traveled with them, and how, for some, this dependence influenced a new way of thinking about the human-animal bond. The pioneers learned how to work with the animals and take care of them while on the move. Many had never ridden a horse before, let alone hitched oxen to a wagon. Due to the close working relationship that the emigrants were forced to have with these animals, many befriended the domestic beasts of burden, even attributing human characteristics to them.

Drawing on primary sources such as journals, diaries, and newspaper accounts, Ahmad explores how these new experiences influenced fresh ideas about the role of animals in pioneer life. Scholars and students of western history and animal studies will find this a fascinating and distinctive analysis of an understudied topic.

While the most important measure of success for many degree-seeking students is the timely attainment of a Bachelor’s degree, there remains a host of other indicators of student success that vary by student population and students’ personal goals. Many of these smaller successes lead to the ultimate goal of graduation and are significant triumphs throughout the journey through higher education.

Success for All is a strategic guide for administrators and educators that offers methods for advising students through the myriad of challenges they face. Every bit of success contributes to the accomplishment of a larger goal, and this book highlights success at every level. It provides a specific roadmap to the research, services, and programs at the University of Nevada, Reno and Truckee Meadows Community College that support student success in undergraduate and graduate programs regardless of a student’s social, emotional, or prior academic experiences. Contributors discuss how to make students feel welcome in their social and educational environments and how to directly assist them with the timely completion of their degree. Administrators and educators demonstrate how these programs help make a positive contribution to the students and the institutions they serve while implementing practical solutions to increase graduation rates.
 

More than forty million visitors per year travel to Sin City to visit the gambling mecca of the world. But gambling is only one part of the city’s story. In this carefully documented history, Geoff Schumacher tracks the rise of Las Vegas, including its vital role during World War II; the rise of the Strip in the 1950s; the explosive growth of the 1990s; and the colossal collapse triggered by the real estate bust and economic crisis of the mid-2000s. Schumacher surveys the history of the iconic casinos, debunking myths and highlighting key players such as Howard Hughes, Kirk Kerkorian, and Steve Wynn.
 
Schumacher’s history also profiles the Las Vegas where more than two million people live. He explores the neighborhoods sprawling beyond the Strip’s neon gleam and uncovers a diverse community offering much more than table games, lounge acts, and organized crime. Schumacher discusses contemporary Las Vegas, charting its course from the nation’s fastest-growing metropolis to one of the Great Recession’s most battered victims.
 
Sun, Sin & Suburbia will appeal to tourists looking to understand more than the glitz and glitter of Las Vegas and to newcomers who want to learn about their new hometown. It will also be an essential addition to any longtime Nevadan’s library of local history.
 
First published in 2012 by Stephens Press, this paperback edition is now available from the University of Nevada Press.

Sid Dulaney, in his mid-thirties, between jobs and short on funds, has moved back to Tucson to take care of his beloved grandmother. To hold down the cost of her prescriptions, he reluctantly starts smuggling medications over the border. His picaresque misadventures involve the lovable eccentrics at her retirement village, Mexican gang threats, a voluptuous former babysitter, midnight voicemails from his exasperated ex-girlfriend, and, perplexingly, a giraffe. This first novel by the winner of the Iowa Short Fiction Award proves Waters is an important new voice in American fiction. A big, rollicking, character-filled novel, Sunland is an entertaining and humane view at life on the margins in America today. 

From a cartographer who wrote to a writer who mapped, the literary significance of surveying is revealed in this study of human relationships to the landscape. From the very beginning, American literature was closely intertwined with surveying. In Surveying the Interior, Rick Van Noy explores the ways that four American literary cartographers—Henry David Thoreau, Clarence King, John Wesley Powell, and Wallace Stegner—concerned themselves with what it means to map or survey a place and what it means to write about it. In the process, he helps define the ways by which space enters the human psyche as definable place, as well as the ways by which physical landscape is transmuted into a sense of place as an intimate, personal manifestation of both physical and existential realities.

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.

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.

When her parents died and her marriage disintegrated within the span of a few months, art historian and performance artist Joanna Frueh entered a painful period of grief and mourning. This book is about how she healed herself and in the process explored the range of her potential as a woman.Swooning Beauty is an intimate memoir of discovery and healing. Frueh’s path to recovery lay through a profound examination of her intuitions, desires, fantasies, dreams, and emotions, her capacity for pleasure—visual, sensual, intellectual, gastronomic, and erotic—and her sense of her own heroic female identity. Hers is the passionate voice of a creative, intelligent woman scrutinizing the nature of love in all its forms and the ways of being that make us free, flexible, more fully real and more fully human. The result is an engaging view into the rich and colorful inner life of a woman at the threshold of middle age, of the blossoming of mind and spirit that comes after suffering and self-realization. Pleasure, she concludes, “is the absence of lack. Self-love is a necessary plenitude. Vigilance in love brings us freedom. Freedom is not an absolute whose attainment is humanly impossible. Yogis say that the self that is not ego is free. That self is the spacious heart, the spacious mind.” Frueh offers us wisdom and comfort for the journey into middle age, and the deep pleasure of encountering a generous, lively spirit and a remarkably spacious mind.