front cover of The Opium Debate and Chinese Exclusion Laws in the Nineteenth-Century American West
The Opium Debate and Chinese Exclusion Laws in the Nineteenth-Century American West
Diana L. Ahmad
University of Nevada Press, 2011

America’s current "war on drugs" is not the nation’s first. In the mid-nineteenth century, opium-smoking was decried as a major social and public health problem, especially in the West. Although China faced its own epidemic of opium addiction, only a very small minority of Chinese immigrants in America were actually involved in the opium business. It was in Anglo communities that the use of opium soon spread and this growing use was deemed a threat to the nation’s entrepreneurial spirit and to its growing mportance as a world economic and military power. The Opium Debate examines how the spread of opium-smoking fueled racism and created demands for the removal of the Chinese from American life. This meticulously researched study of the nineteenth-century drug-abuse crisis reveals the ways moral crusaders linked their antiopium rhetoric to already active demands for Chinese exclusion. Until this time, anti-Chinese propaganda had been dominated by protests against the economic and political impact of Chinese workers and the alleged role of Chinese women as prostitutes. The use of the drug by Anglos added another reason for demonizing Chinese immigrants. Ahmad describes the disparities between Anglo-American perceptions of Chinese immigrants and the somber realities of these people’s lives, especially the role that opium-smoking came to play in the Anglo-American community, mostly among middle- and upper-class women. The book offers a brilliant analysis of the evolution of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, plus important insights into the social history of the nineteenth-century West, the culture of American Victorianism, and the rhetoric of racism in American politics.
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Success Depends on the Animals
Emigrants, Livestock, and Wild Animals on the Overland Trails, 1840–1869
Diana L. Ahmad
University of Nevada Press, 2016

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.

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Macau and the Casino Complex
Stefan Al
University of Nevada Press, 2018
Special Award of the Jury Winner — 2018 Gourmand World Cookbook Awards 

In only a decade, Macau has exploded from a sleepy backwater to the world’s casino capital. It was bound to happen. Macau, a former Portuguese colony that became a special administrative region within the People’s Republic of China in 1999, was the only place in China where gambling was legal. With a consumer base of 1.3 billion mainland Chinese deprived of casino gambling, and the world’s largest growing consumer class, international corporations rushed in to enter the games. As a result, the casino influx has permanently transformed the Macau peninsula: its ocean reclaimed, hillside excavated, roads congested, air polluted, and glimmering hotel towers tossed into the skyline, dwarfing the 19th century church towers.
 
Essays by a number of experts give a deeper insight on topics ranging from the myth of the Chinese gambler, the role of feng shui in casino design, the city’s struggle with heritage conservation, the politics of land reclamation, and the effect of the casino industry on the public realm. Drawings and photographs in vivid color visualize Macau’s patchwork of distinct urban enclaves: from downtown casinos, their neon-blasting storefronts eclipsing adjacent homes and schools, to the palatial complexes along a new highway, a Las Vegas-style strip. They also reveal how developers go to great lengths to impress the gambler with gimmicks such as fluorescent lighting, botanic gardens, feng shui dragon statues, cast members’ costumes, Chinese art imitations, and crystal chandelier-decked elevators. It is a book that helps readers grasp the complex process of the development of the casino industry and its overall impact on the social and architectural fabric of the first and last colonial enclave in China.
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front cover of Rodeo Cowboys In The North American Imagination
Rodeo Cowboys In The North American Imagination
Michael Allen
University of Nevada Press, 1998

Rodeo is an enduring relic of America’s popular culture, drawing capacity audiences to all its venues, from small western cowtowns to Madison Square Garden. The rodeo cowboy, that figure of rugged independence and solitary courage, continues to evoke the spirit of a vanished frontier and the hardy pioneers who conquered it. In this study historian Michael Allen examines the image of the rodeo cowboy and the role this image has played in popular culture over the past century. He sees rodeo as a significant American folk festival and the rodeo cowboy as the avatar of a nearly extinct authentic figure, the “real cowboy,” who embodies the skills and values of traditional western rural culture. Allen’s analysis explores the evolution of the myth of the rodeo man and its subsequent institutionalization and acculturation into the media of popular culture. He also examines the impact on this myth of significant changes in the rodeo milieu—the commercialization of the event and the professionalization of rodeo performers; the arrival on the rodeo scene of performers from outside the white, male, western, rural origins of the traditional cowboy performers. He discovers that America’s—and indeed the world’s—fascination with the rodeo cowboy reflects feelings far deeper than a taste for exciting entertainment. Allen’s discussion of the archetypal figure of the rodeo cowboy will change forever our perception of rodeo, but it will also help us understand how the ancient tension between frontier and civilization continues to play a role in our national imagination.

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Diasporas in the New Media Age
Identity, Politics, and Community
Andoni Alonso
University of Nevada Press, 2010

The explosion of digital information and communication technologies has influenced almost every aspect of contemporary life. Diasporas in the New Media Age is the first book-length examination of the social use of these technologies by emigrants and diasporas around the world. The eighteen original essays in the book explore the personal, familial, and social impact of modern communication technology on populations of European, Asian, African, Caribbean, Middle Eastern, and Latin American emigrants. It also looks at the role and transformation of such concepts as identity, nation, culture, and community in the era of information technology and economic globalization. The contributors, who represent a number of disciplines and national origins, also take a range of approaches—empirical, theoretical, and rhetorical—and combine case studies with thoughtful analysis. Diasporas in the New Media Age is both a discussion of the use of communication technologies by various emigrant groups and an engaging account of the immigrant experience in the contemporary world. It offers important insights into the ways that dispersed populations are using digital media to maintain ties with their families and homeland, and to create new communities that preserve their culture and reinforce their sense of identity. In addition, the book is a significant contribution to our understanding of the impact of technology on society in general.

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Chorizos In An Iron Skillet
Memories And Recipes From An American Basque Daughter
Mary Ancho Davis
University of Nevada Press, 2001
Mary Ancho Davis invites everyone to join her at her mother’s table as she recalls her family’s traditions and history and shares special memories from her mother Dominga’s kitchen. From huge cream puffs filled with heavy cream skimmed from the top of raw milk, to recollections of ringing the large iron triangle hanging from a tree branch outside the kitchen door, in Chorizos in an Iron Skillet,Ancho Davis offers wonderful details about life and meals on her family’s Basque ranch.
In this charming cookbook, Mary Ancho Davis traces a path from Old Country traditional dishes to their modern versions as she shares her family’s recipes and details the evolution of Basque cooking in America. A personal cookbook from one Basque family, Chorizos in an Iron Skillet is also an engaging cultural study of culinary traditions that spans several generations of Basque immigration to the American West. With recipes for everything from Chicken with Chocolate and Dominga’s Basque Chorizos to Dried Apricot Pie, these Basque ranch dishes offer a multitude of delicious ideas for down-home cooking.
Illustrated with photographs from the Ancho family, plus helpful advice on ingredients and cooking techniques, Chorizos in an Iron Skillet is the perfect kitchen companion for filling your home with the flavors and aromas of Basque cooking.
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Lost in Austin
A Nevada Memoir
Jim Andersen
University of Nevada Press, 2009

In 1974 Jim Andersen and his wife, tired of the congestion and high taxes in California, decided to start a new life in rural Nevada. They settled on Austin, a town of about 250 people perched on a mountainside along the legendary Highway 50, “the loneliest road in America.” In the middle of the nineteenth century, Austin was a free-wheeling boomtown at the center of a silver bonanza. By the time the Andersens arrived, it had shrunk to a quiet, isolated community of self-sufficient souls who ran their lives, economy, and local government their own way, with ingenuity, wit, and a certain disregard for convention. Andersen’s account of his life in Austin is a charming, sometimes hilarious account of city folks adapting to life in a small town. He addresses such matters as making a living from a variety of odd jobs, some of them odder than others; serving as a deputy sheriff, deputy coroner, and elected justice of the peace, and administering Austin’s unique version of justice; raising a family; finding ways to have fun; and exploring the austerely beautiful backcountry of central Nevada. He also introduces some of Austin’s residents and their stories, and describes the way the community comes together for entertainment or to respond to crises.Lost in Austin is fascinating reading for anyone who cherishes nostalgic memories of living in a small town, or who contemplates moving to one. It offers an engaging portrait of a Nevada that exists far from the glitz and glitter of Las Vegas and Reno, “a happy Bermuda Triangle” where rugged individualism and community spirit flourish amidst sagebrush and vast open spaces.

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Walk of Ages
A Generational Journey from Mt. Whitney to Death Valley
Withanee Andersen
University of Nevada Press, 2024
Following in her father’s footsteps, Withanee Andersen begins the expedition of a lifetime when she and her comrades embark on a trek from Mt. Whitney to Death Valley, tracing the rugged path her father, Jim Andersen, traversed forty-three years earlier.

With hopes of being listed in the Guinness Book of World Records, Jim led the first documented walk from the highest to lowest point in the contiguous United States­ in 1974.  He lived, albeit just barely, to tell the tale to his daughter, sparking a desire in Withanee to retrace his steps in his honor. In 2017, she took on the incredible task of recreating Jim’s legacy trek of 131 miles with the help of divine intervention, ice-cold beer, and her parents, who were following along as the support party.

Walk of Ages humorously relates the parallel journey of an epic adventure told from two perspectives–a daughter’s difficult quest, and a father who supports her, through it while recalling his own experiences from four decades earlier. Throughout this momentous odyssey, readers will realize how a once-in-a-generation adventure leads to life-changing transformation, and that the bond between father and daughter knows no bounds. 
 
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Fragments of a Mortal Mind
A Nonfiction Novel
Donald Anderson
University of Nevada Press, 2021
We are where we’ve been and what we’ve read, aren’t we? Where else do we get the experience we need to evocatively live?

At once a memoir, a reading journal, and a novel, Fragments of a Mortal Mind is a daring, contemporary commonplace book. Donald Anderson, critically acclaimed author of Gathering Noise from My Life and Below Freezing, shows us how the disparate elements of our lives collect to construct our deepest selves and help us to make sense of it all. Anderson layers his personal experiences and reflections with those of others who have wrestled with inner and outer social, cultural, and political memories that are not as accurate as history might suggest but that each of us believe nonetheless. He challenges the reader’s sense of memory and fact, downplaying the latter in explaining how each of us crafts our own personal histories.

As Anderson weaves his voice among numerous other voices and ideas that rest upon other ideas, we are faced with larger issues of human existence: war, memory, trauma, mortality, religion, fear, joy, ugliness, and occasional beauty. What we have here is a meditation on living in America. We are shown how the world we consume becomes us as we metabolize it. How we, as humans, through our own fragments of memories, influences, and experiences become our true selves. By charting fragments of thoughts over a lifetime, Anderson exposes a way of thinking and perceiving the world that is refreshingly intuitive and desperately needed. Fragments of a Mortal Mind is a powerful masterpiece that closely resembles our lived experiences and is a vivid reflection of our time.
 
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Nevada Printing History
A Bibliography Of Imprints And Publications, 1858-1880
Robert D. Armstrong
University of Nevada Press, 1981

A detailed look at Nevada's printing history from 1858 through 1880. Includes proclamations, pamphlets, menus, government publications, church programs, and more. For Nevada historians, bibliographers, book collectors, and people who are interested in the printed records produced in Nevada toward the end of the nineteenth century.

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Nevada Printing History
A Bibliography Of Imprints And Publications, 1881-1890
Robert D. Armstrong
University of Nevada Press, 1991

A detailed look at Nevada's printing history from 1881 through 1890. With over 1400 entries describing books, pamphlets, broadsides, state and local documents, fraternal and church publications, and a variety of other printed matter, this intriguing compilation serves as the companion volume to Armstrong's Nevada Printing History, 1858-1880. Armstrong includes annual summaries of events affecting the printing trade in Nevada as well as the locations and kinds of printing technology in use. This second volume also documents the planning and erection of a state printing office. Of particular interest are the summaries of individual publications that provide the reader with a picture of social, economic, and political viewpoints of the period. The author's research led him to more than 125 public institutions over a period of nearly twenty years. Historians, bibliographers, students of printing history and practice, collectors of Western Americana, antiquarian booksellers, and librarians will find this book to be an invaluable guide to Nevada's printing, its printers, and its history.

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Imaging Hoover Dam
The Making of a Cultural Icon
Anthony F. Arrigo
University of Nevada Press, 2014
The mighty Hoover Dam, starting as a dream of land developers and farmers, became the most ambitious civil engineering project of the Great Depression. This landmark in the middle of the Mojave Desert, holding back the largest man-made lake in America, also became, like Mount Rushmore or the Empire State Building, a visual and cultural icon. The power and meanings of this icon came not through a single image but via myriad visual representations, in government propaganda, advertising, journalism, and art. Even before it was built, these images were used to shape the public’s perception of the project and frame the dam as the linchpin to an expanding American economic empire in the desert Southwest.

Anthony F. Arrigo has researched a wide array of primary sources and archival materials to trace the project from its earliest representations in illustrations to the documentary photography of its construction and later depictions of the structure in commercial promotions, fine art photography, and paintings. Analyzing Hoover Dam through the trajectory of imagery across several decades, rather than the narrative of its construction, illuminates the underlying cultural and ecological imperatives in the drive to build it, including the influence of religious doctrine and the American agrarian movement. Arrigo also discusses various portrayals of laborers, women, minority groups, nature, and technology in this imagery. In time, the visual icon of power and domination was commercialized to sell cars, vacations, and more.

Imaging Hoover Dam is an important work in both visual rhetoric and cultural studies. It will also intrigue readers interested in such varied topics as the history of the American Southwest, the Great Depression and the New Deal, social and environmental issues, and American popular culture.
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Basque-English Dictionary
Gorka Aulestia
University of Nevada Press, 1989
This is the most comprehensive Basque-English dictionary; it incorporates all six major dialects of the revitalized language. With skill and precision, Gorka Aulestia has tackled the difficult problem of translating the non-Indo-European Basque language into English.
Nearly 50,000 entries in six major dialects are included in this comprehensive dictionary. A concise introduction combines the basics of Basque verb forms, and each entry provides essential information such as part of speech and dialect markers.
Special attention is given to words relating to modern society, contradicting the old adage that Basque is a rural-based language. Many of these terms do not appear in existing Basque-Spanish or Basque-French dictionaries.
A formal guide to writing speech, this dictionary will be of interest to scholars, students, Basque Americans, Old World Basques learning English, and libraries around the world.
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Improvisational Poetry From The Basque Country
Gorka Aulestia
University of Nevada Press, 1995

Foreword by William A. Douglass Translated by Lisa Corcostegui and Linda White.Improvisational Poetry from the Basque Country introduces the Basque bertsolari to the English-speaking world and provides an understanding of an interesting cultural phenomenon—the artist in Basque society who is capable of improvising verse on any subject spontaneously and setting it to music. The tradition is at least several centuries old and runs the gamut from amateurish efforts to periodic national championship competitions. These competitions draw thousands of listeners and pack theaters while many other thousands tune their radios to the broadcasts of the performances. Aulestia takes a scholarly and in-depth look at the art of the bertsolari. In a fascinating text, the author examines the history of a tradition that is truly unique and completely Basque. He introduces and analyzes the performing styles of great bertsolariak, including Xabier Amuriza and Jon Azpillaga. From the bertsolari’s roots in the old Basque Country to the social phenomenon it is today, Aulestia’s look at the improvisational oral literature of the Basques is an essential addition to their written history.
 

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The Basque Poetic Tradition
Gorka Aulestia
University of Nevada Press, 2000
Renowned Basque literary scholar Gorka Aulestia continues his path-breaking study of the literary heritage of the Basque people. In this collection of fourteen essays, he considers the legacy of great Basque poets and their contributions to the tradition, influence on successive poets, and their place in the world’s poetry scene. Examining these poets and their work in the context of Basque cultural traditions and concurrent European literary movements, Aulestia sheds light on the colorful world of Basque poetry.
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Basque-English, English-Basque Dictionary
Gorka Aulestia
University of Nevada Press, 1992
This pocket-sized Basque-English, English-Basque dictionary was designed for a broad audience—students, teachers, people of Basque descent, and travelers—and contains definitions of the most commonly used Basque and English words. This compact softcover volume is the condensed version of the two larger dictionaries, Basque-English Dictionary and English-Basque Dictionary. These two comprehensive reference works were highly praised by critics and well received by the public. Prepared by two scholars of the Basque language, this streamlined volume is an indispensable aid for students, travelers, and those who need to translate quickly between Basque and English. The unified Batua dialect is emphasized.
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English-Basque Dictionary
Gorka Aulestia
University of Nevada Press, 1990
With over 25,000 English entries and their Basque equivalents in six major dialects, this volume is the most complete reference to the Basque language to date for English-speaking people. This useful resource is the very first of its kind to become available to both the casual student and the serious scholar of the Basque language. The Biscayan, Guipuzcoan, Labourdin, Low Navarrese, Zuberoan, and Batua dialects are included in order to cover all the different regional and formal dialects used in the body of Basque literature, both written and oral, and to present the language in a form familiar to American Basques who may know little of Batua. Whenever possible, the authors also include words relating to modern society.
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Cactus Thorn
(A Novella)
Mary Austin
University of Nevada Press, 1994
Set primarily in the lonesome southwest desert lands of the 1920s, this novella is a powerful story in which landscape reflects and defines character. In this beautifully written tale, a promising young politician, Grant Arliss, flees from this pressure-ridden life in New York City to the serenity of the desert’s open spaces.
There, he finds not only a place to sort out his confusion but also a remarkable woman, unlike any he has met. In his eyes, Dulcie Adelaid is an aloof creature of the desert who relies only on herself. Challenged and yet inhibited by the desert’s unrelenting force, Arliss admires Dulcie’s instinctive ability to thrive in the harsh country. She also provides a spiritual sustenance that he has never found with any other woman. Together they engage in lively conversations about his political convictions and her beliefs and values. Inspired, Arliss returns to New York where he delivers eloquent speeches to an overwhelmingly supportive constituency.
Placing Cactus Thorn in biographical, feminist, and literary perspective, Melody Graulich's commentary discusses how Austin’s themes are timeless in setting and moral tone. Foreword and afterword by Melody Graulich.
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The Trail Book
Mary Austin
University of Nevada Press, 2004
The Trail Book is a classic of American nature writing. First published in 1918, it is a collection of children’s tales, framed by its setting in New York’s Museum of Natural History. For two children, Oliver and his sister Dorcas, the museum’s famed dioramas (which were new at that time) come to life and admit them into a series of exciting adventures that include talking animals and magical travels. Along the way, the children discover the ways of the ancient Native Americans and the landscapes of the pre-Columbian continent, as well as the impact on both Indians and wildlife from contact with European explorers and Euro-Americans. Told by a variety of narrators, including some of the animals, the stories offer a perceptive and sympathetic view of the natural history of North America and of Native American–white relations.

This edition of The Trail Book includes an afterword by Austin scholar Melody Graulich that addresses Austin’s motives in writing the book and its significance as an early example of interdisciplinary multicultural literature. The illustrations by Milo Winter that enlivened the original edition are included, as are Austin’s appendix giving historical background and a glossary of Indian and Spanish names.

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The Flock
Mary Austin
University of Nevada Press, 2001
This classic novel, first published in 1906 and based on Mary Austin's own experiences, captures the way of life of shepherds in the Sierra. Austin blends natural history, politics, and allegory in a genre-blurring narrative, championing local shepherds in their losing battle against the quickly developing tourist business in the Western Sierra during the nineteenth century. Austin had met many shepherds while visiting the Tejon ranches of Edward Beale and Henry Miller, and cultivated relationships with men others often thought of as ignorant, unambitious, and dirty, listening closely to their stories. Her neighbors were scandalized, but Austin respected the shepherds’ ways of thinking. Rather than portray these shepherds’ lives as part of a romantic bygone era, in this novel, she instead positions them as exemplifying potentially radical ways of living in and thinking about the world. Afterword by Barney Nelson.
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The Basket Woman
A Book Of Indian Tales
Mary Austin
University of Nevada Press, 1999
Austin's charming and evocative stories dramatize the legacy of conquest upon a land and its native peoples. Although these stories, out of print for almost a century, were first intended as delightful and instructive reading for children, on another level they are an intense examination of the dramatic implications of a legacy of conquest upon the land and its native peoples. In Austin’s tales, cocky young glaciers, contemplative pine trees, resourceful ancient Paiutes, and rabbits too clever for their own good all become companions and teachers to Alan, the young son of homesteaders in early Nevada. The kindly but mysterious Basket Woman, who tells him these tales, is a keeper of her people's traditions. She doesn't simply tell stories: she transports her young friend into a powerful and mythic past, where Alan learns the secrets of the trees and animals and the wisdom of the people who flourished in this "land of little rain" before the arrival of foreigners from the east. A new foreword by Austin scholar and environmental writer Mark Schlenz provide ample context for a multilevel appreciation of one of this remarkable writer's most important works.
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Sacramento and the Catholic Church
Shaping a Capital City
Steven Avella
University of Nevada Press, 2008
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.

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