A SCHOLARLY BOOK REPOSITORY62 start with D start with D
Dairylandia recounts Steve Hannah’s burgeoning love for his adopted state through the writings of his long-lived column, “State of Mind.” He profiles the lives of the seemingly ordinary, yet quite (and quietly) extraordinary folks he met and befriended on his travels. From Norwegian farmers to rattlesnake hunters to a woman who kept her favorite dead bird in the freezer, Hannah was charmed and fascinated by practically everyone he met. These captivating vignettes are by turns humorous, tragic, and remarkable—and remind us of our shared humanity.
“On a bend, I will see it, a piece of ground off to the side. I will know the feel of this place: the leaves stir slowly on the trees, dry air smells like dust, birds dart and the trails are made by beasts living free.”
When award-winning author Charles Bowden died in 2014, he left behind a trove of unpublished manuscripts. Dakotah marks the landmark publication of the first of these texts, and the fourth installment in his acclaimed “Unnatural History of America.” Bowden uses America’s Great Plains as a lens—sometimes sullied, sometimes shattered, but always sharp—for observing pivotal moments in the lives of anguished figures, including himself.
In scenes that are by turns wrenching and poetic, Bowden describes the Sioux’s forced migrations and rebellions alongside his own ancestors’ migrations from Europe to Midwestern acres beset by unforgiving winters. He meditates on the lives of his resourceful mother and his philosophical father, who rambled between farm communities and city life. Interspersed with these images are clear-eyed, textbook-defying anecdotes about Lewis and Clark, Daniel Boone, and, with equal verve, twentieth-century entertainers “Pee Wee” Russell, Peggy Lee, and other musicians. The result is a kaleidoscopic journey that penetrates the senses and redefines the notion of heartland. Dakotah is a powerful ode to loss from one of our most fiercely independent writers.
Can a man have a love affair with a foreign land? Ron Butler never dreamed Mexico would capture his heart and his soul. But when his ex-wife moved to Guadalajara with their children in the wake of divorce, he found himself crisscrossing the country, seduced by its charms and moved by its rhythms and its melodies.
Like the diver of an old Mexican legend who lives beneath the sea seeking the best pearl, Butler lost himself in Mexico and found the hidden treasures of every tiny hamlet and big metropolis. He writes about the endangered monarch butterflies of El Rosario, the street bands of Zacatecas, and the mummies of Guanajuato. He takes a magical night ferry ride from Mazatlán and a train excursion into Copper Canyon—a chasm four times larger than the Grand Canyon—in Mexico's most mysterious mountains. He goes off the beaten path in such tourist havens as Acapulco and Cancún. And he walks in the footsteps of movie stars and artists who too have been enamored of Mexico.
Poking into the nooks and crannies of Mexico, Butler indulges in tasty Mexican specialties at both the finest restaurants and out-of-the-way street stands. He finds the best tequila in the town named Tequila, the world's most delicious cup of coffee in Veracruz, the sweetest dulce in Morelia, and the best mole—a Mayan chile and chocolate sauce embellished by nuns anxious to please a visiting Spanish viceroy—in Puebla. Sharing his considerable knowledge of art, Butler also uncovers the best of Mexico's museums and advises shoppers about folk crafts.
Informative and helpful as the best travel guide, Dancing Alone in Mexico will help even seasoned travelers to get the most out of their trips to Mexico. Casual and lively as the best travel memoir, the book will also delight the armchair traveler with south-of-the-border stories and adventures that come only to those who dance not alone but with an entire land.
Combining scientific curiosity with travel and adventure, Dancing at the Dead Sea takes the reader on an intimate tour through the world's environmental hotspots. Readers join Mitchell as she tracks the spectacular biodiversity of regions as extraordinary as the island of Madagascar, the rain forests of Suriname, the parched oases of Jordan, the Arctic desert of Banks Island, the volcanic crests of Iceland, and, ultimately, the Galapagos archipelago, where Darwin conducted his famous research. Along the way, Mitchell introduces us to the numerous scientists and conservationists who are working to protect these endangered places. She also chronicles the courageous efforts of everyday men and women in these regions as they try to convince governments to turn the world's hotspots into environmentally protected areas.
Ultimately, Mitchell's travels around the world compel her to ponder our shelf life as a species in the grand evolutionary scheme of the planet. She wonders what Darwin would make of the profound ecological destruction she witnesses. Is the human race suicidal? What can help our species avert extinction? Posing tough and cutting questions such as these, Dancing at the Dead Sea is a must-read for aficionados of good science writing and travel literature alike.
During the Sonoran Desert’s glorious and brutal summer season Annerino, a photojournalist, author, and explorer, watched four border crossers step off a bus and nonchalantly head into the American no-man’s land. On assignment for Newsweek, Annerino did more than just watch on that blistering August day. He joined them on their ultramarathon, life-or-death quest to find work to feed their families, amid temperatures so hot your parched throat burns from breathing and drinking water is the ultimate treasure.
As their water dwindled and the heat punished them, Annerino and the desperate men continued marching fifty miles in twenty-four hours and managed to survive their harrowing journey across the deadliest migrant trail in North America, El Camino del Diablo, “The Road of the Devil.” Driven by the mounting death toll, John returned again and again to the sun-scorched despoblado (uninhabited lands)—where hidden bighorn sheep water tanks glowed like diamonds—to document the lives, struggles, and heartbreaking remains of those who continue to disappear and perish in a region that’s claimed the lives of more than 9,700 men, women, and children.
Following the historic paths of indigenous Hia Ced O’odham (People of the Sand), Spanish missionary explorer Padre Eusebio Francisco Kino, and California-bound Forty-Niners, Annerino’s journeys on foot, crisscrossed the alluring yet treacherous desert trails of the El Camino del Diablo, Hohokam shell trail, and O’odham salt trails where hundreds of gambusinos (Mexican miners) and Euro-American pioneers succumbed during the 1850s.
As the migrants kept coming, the deaths kept mounting, and Annerino kept returning. He crossed celebrated Sonoran Desert sanctuaries—Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, Barry M. Goldwater Range, sacred ancestral lands of the Tohono O’odham—that had become lost horizons, killing grounds, graveyards, and deadly smuggling corridors that also claimed the lives of National Park rangers and Border Patrol agents. John Annerino’s mission was to save someone, anyone, everyone—when he could find them.
Dead in Their Tracks is the saga of a merciless despoblado in the Great Southwest, of desperate yet hopeful migrants and refugees who keep staggering north. It is the story of ranchers, locals, and Border Patrol trackers who’ve saved countless lives, and heavily armed smugglers who haunt an inhospitable, if beautiful, wilderness that remains off the radar for journalists and news organizations that dare not set foot in the American desert waiting to welcome them on its terms.
The Dead Ladies Project is an account of that journey—but it’s also much, much more. Fascinated by exile, Crispin travels an itinerary of key locations in its literary map, of places that have drawn writers who needed to break free from their origins and start afresh. As she reflects on William James struggling through despair in Berlin, Nora Barnacle dependant on and dependable for James Joyce in Trieste, Maud Gonne fomenting revolution and fostering myth in Dublin, or Igor Stravinsky starting over from nothing in Switzerland, Crispin interweaves biography, incisive literary analysis, and personal experience into a rich meditation on the complicated interactions of place, personality, and society that can make escape and reinvention such an attractive, even intoxicating proposition.
Personal and profane, funny and fervent, The Dead Ladies Project ranges from the nineteenth century to the present, from historical figures to brand-new hangovers, in search, ultimately, of an answer to a bedrock question: How does a person decide how to live their life?
Since first reported to the world in 1780, the death of Captain Cook on a Hawaiian beach the previous year has been revered, celebrated, and shrouded in mystery. Simultaneously called a hero and an antihero, a ruthless invader, and a torchbearer of the Enlightenment, Cook’s reputation grew as much out of the moving story of his death as out of his adventures while he lived.
In a style that is more detective story than conventional biography, Glyn Williams explores the multiple narratives of Cook’s death. He reveals how the British Admiralty first attempted to censor accounts of Cook’s erratic behavior and how the “authorized” version of his death—a lengthy narrative serialized in the leading publications of the day—reduced the story to the final hours of a noble leader who gave his life to save others. Williams argues that the contrary evidence of a chaotic bloody fracas on the beach at Kealakekua Bay was ignored, and that the unexplained disappearance of Cook’s own journal helped the process of concealment. He believes that Cook was not entirely the man sanctified by the British public. More than two hundred years later, an explosive interplay between academic controversy and nationalist feelings has once more drawn attention to a life that has attracted praise and controversy, abhorrence and admiration. In short, Williams examines the story of Cook’s progress from obscurity to fame and, eventually, to infamy—a story that, until now, has never been fully told.
This history begins with a discussion of the physical setting, its geography and geology, and descriptions of the Timbisha, the first peoples to inhabit this tough and dangerous landscape. In the 19th-century and early 20th century, new arrivals came to exploit the mineral resources in the region and develop permanent agricultural and resort settlements. Although Death Valley was established as a National Monument in 1933, fear of the harsh desert precluded widespread acceptance by both the visiting public and its own administrative agency. As a result, Death Valley lacked both support and resources. This volume details the many debates over the park’s size, conflicts between miners, farmers, the military, and wilderness advocates, the treatment of the Timbisha, and the impact of tourists on its cultural and natural resources.
In time, Death Valley came to be seen as one of the great natural wonders of the United States, and was elevated to full national park status in 1994. The history of Death Valley National Park embodies the many tensions confronting American environmentalism.
The Battle of Antietam has long been known as the bloodiest day in American military history with more than twenty thousand soldiers either dead, wounded, or missing. The Confederacy, emboldened after a conclusive victory at the Battle of Second Manassas, launched the Maryland Campaign and considered a decisive battle on northern soil as a lynchpin to their objectives. As Gen. Robert E. Lee pushed his veteran Army of Northern Virginia deeper into Maryland, Gen. George B. McClellan hastily assembled a refurbished Army of the Potomac. After engagements at South Mountain and Harpers Ferry, Lee concentrated his forces near the small village of Sharpsburg. On September 17, 1862, McClellan attacked at dawn, igniting a battle that raged until sunset. By the end of the following day, Lee’s battered army began its withdrawal. The eventual Confederate retreat provided the Lincoln Administration a much sought after victory. President Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation just four days later, dramatically altering the very nature of the war.
Decisions at Antietam introduces readers to critical decisions made by Confederate and Union commanders throughout the battle. Michael S. Lang examines the decisions that prefigured the action and shaped the contest as it unfolded. Rather than a linear history of the battle, Lang’s discussion of the critical decisions presents readers with a vivid blueprint of the battle’s developments. Exploring the critical decisions in this way allows the reader to progress from a sense of what happened in these battles to why they happened as they did
Complete with maps and a guided tour, Decisions at Antietam is an indispensable primer, and readers looking for a concise introduction to the battle can tour this sacred ground—or read about it at their leisure—with key insights into the battle and a deeper understanding of the Civil War itself.
Decisions at Antietam is the ninth in a series of books that will explore the critical decisions of major campaigns and battles of the Civil War.
Decisions at Chattanooga introduces readers to critical decisions made by Confederate and Union commanders. Larry Peterson examines the decisions that shaped the way both campaign and battle unfolded. Rather than offering a history of the Battle of Chattanooga, Peterson focuses on the critical decisions, presenting the reader with a coherent and manageable blueprint of the battle’s development. Exploring and studying the critical decisions allows the reader to progress from an understanding of what happened to why events happened as they did.
Complete with maps and a guided tour, Decisions at Chattanooga is an indispensable primer, and readers looking for a digestible introduction to the Battle of Chattanooga can tour this sacred ground—or read about it at their leisure—with key insights into the campaign and a deeper understanding of the Civil War itself.
Decisions at Chattanooga is the fourth in a series of books that will explore the critical decisions of major campaigns and battles of the Civil War.
Decisions at Chickamauga introduces readers to critical decisions made by Confederate and Union commanders during that fateful battle. Rather than offering a history of the Battle of Chickamauga, Powell focuses on critical decisions as they developed. This account is designed to present the reader with a coherent and manageable interpretive blueprint of the battle’s key moments. Exploring and studying these critical decisions allows the reader to progress from an understanding of what happened to why events happened as they did.
Complete with maps and a guided tour, Decisions at Chickamauga will be an indispensable primer, and readers looking for a digestible introduction to the Battle of Chickamauga can tour this sacred ground—or read about it at their leisure—and gain key insights into why events unfolded as they did as well as a deeper understanding of the Civil War itself.
Decisions at Chickamauga is the third in a series of books that will explore the critical decisions of major campaigns and battles of the Civil War.
DAVE POWELL is the author of five books on the Battle of Chickamauga, including the three-volume The Chickamauga Campaign. His articles have appeared in North & South Magazine, Gettysburg Magazine, and Civil War History, among others.
Decisions at Forts Henry and Donelson explores the critical decisions made by Confederate and Federal commanders during the battle and how these decisions shaped its outcome. Rather than offering a history of the battle, Hank Koopman hones in on a sequence of critical decisions made by commanders on both sides of the conflict to provide a blueprint of the Battles of Forts Henry and Donelson at their tactical core. Identifying and exploring the critical decisions in this way allows students of the battles to progress from a knowledge of what happened to a mature grasp of why events happened.
Complete with maps and a driving tour, Decisions at Forts Henry and Donelson is an indispensable primer, and readers looking for a concise introduction to these battles can tour this sacred ground—or read about it at their leisure—with key insights into the campaigns and a deeper understanding of the Civil War itself.
Decisions at Forts Henry and Donelson is the eighteenth in a series of books that will explore the critical decisions of major campaigns and battles of the Civil War.
From December 31, 1862, to January 2, 1863, the Army of the Cumberland and Army of Tennessee fought a bloody battle along Stones River. Led by Major General William S. Rosecrans, Union forces would eventually emerge victorious. Coming at the end of a series of Union defeats, this victory would give Lincoln and the Northern population a bright ray of hope during a fall and winter of reversals.
Decisions at Stones River introduces readers to critical decisions made by Confederate and Union commanders. Matt Spruill and Lee Spruill examine the decisions that shaped the way the campaign and battle unfolded. Rather than offering a history of the Battle of Stones River, the Spruills focus on the critical decisions, those decisions that had a major impact on both Federal and Confederate forces in shaping the progression of the battle as we know it today. This account is designed to present the reader with a coherent and manageable blueprint of the battle’s development. Exploring and studying the critical decisions allows the reader to progress from an understanding of “what happened” to “why events happened” as they did.
Complete with maps and a guided tour, Decisions at Stones River is an indispensable primer, and readers looking for a digestible introduction to the Battle of Stones River can tour this sacred ground—or read about it at their leisure—with key insights into why events unfolded as they did and a deeper understanding of the Civil War itself.
Decisions at Stones River is the first in a series of books that will explore the critical decisions of major campaigns and battles of the Civil War
The successive battles of The Wilderness and Spotsylvania Court House opened Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s 1864 Overland Campaign. As the first confrontation between Union and Confederate leaders Grant and Gen. Robert E. Lee, these two bloody battles signaled the new reality of war. The fighting at the Battle of The Wilderness, immediately followed by the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, was costly for both sides, and while the Union army could replace its losses, Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia could not. It would be exactly one year from Grant’s orders to Gen. George G. Meade stating that Lee’s army would be his objective until the surrender at Appomattox.
Decisions at The Wilderness and Spotsylvania Court House introduces readers to critical decisions made by Confederate and Union commanders throughout the two costly meetings. Dave Townsend examines the decisions that prefigured the action and shaped the course of each battle as it unfolded. Rather than a linear history of the battles, Townsend’s discussion of the critical decisions presents readers with a vivid blueprint of the battles’ developments. Exploring the critical decisions in this way allows the reader to progress from a sense of what happened in these battles to why they happened as they did.
Complete with maps and a guided tour, Decisions at The Wilderness and Spotsylvania Court House is an indispensable primer, and readers looking for concise introductions to the battles can tour this sacred ground—or read about it at their leisure—with key insights into the battles and a deeper understanding of the Civil War itself.
Decisions at The Wilderness and Spotsylvania Court House is the seventh in a series of books that will explore the critical decisions of major campaigns and battles of the Civil War.
Decisions of the 1862 Kentucky Campaign introduces readers to critical decisions made by Confederate and Union commanders throughout the heartland contest. Rather than offering a history of the Kentucky Campaign, Larry Peterson hones in on a sequence of critical decisions confronting commanders on both sides of the clash to provide a blueprint of the campaign at its tactical core. Identifying and exploring the critical decisions in this way allows students of history to go from a rudimentary sense of the what of warfare, to a mature grasp of why.
Complete with maps and a guided tour, Decisions of the 1862 Kentucky Campaign is an indispensable primer, and readers looking for a digestible introduction to the campaign’s battles can tour this sacred ground—or read about it at their leisure—with key insights into the campaign and a deeper understanding of the Civil War itself.
Decisions of the 1862 Kentucky Campaign is the sixth in a series of books that will explore the critical decisions of major campaigns and battles of the Civil War.
LARRY PETERSON retired from United Airlines as a Boeing 757/767 Standard Captain. He is the author of Confederate Combat Commander: The Remarkable Life of Brigadier General Alfred Jefferson Vaughn Jr. and Decisions at Chattanooga.
Decisions of the 1862 Shenandoah Valley Campaign explores the critical decisions made by Confederate and Union commanders during the battle and how these decisions shaped its outcome. Rather than offering a history of the battle, Robert G. Tanner hones in on a sequence of critical decisions made by commanders on both sides of the contest to provide a blueprint of Jackson’s Valley Campaign at its tactical core. Identifying and exploring the critical decisions in this way allows students of the battle to progress from a knowledge of what happened to a mature grasp of why events happened.
Complete with maps and a driving tour, Decisions of the 1862 Shenandoah Valley Campaign is an indispensable primer, and readers looking for a concise introduction to the battle can tour this sacred ground—or read about it at their leisure—with key insights into the campaign and a deeper understanding of the Civil War itself.
Decisions of the 1862 Shenandoah Valley Campaign is the seventeenth in a series of books that will explore the critical decisions of major campaigns and battles of the Civil War.
Decisions of the Atlanta Campaign introduces readers to critical decisions made by Confederate and Union commanders throughout that tide-turning summer of 1864. Rather than offering a history of the Atlanta Campaign, Larry Peterson hones in on a sequence of critical decisions confronting commanders on both sides of the clash to provide a blueprint of the campaign at its tactical core. Identifying and exploring the critical decisions in this way allows students of the campaign to progress from a rudimentary sense of the what of warfare, to a mature grasp of why.
Complete with maps and a guided tour, Decisions of the Atlanta Campaign is an indispensable primer, and readers looking for a digestible introduction to the Battle of Chattanooga can tour this sacred ground—or read about it at their leisure—with key insights into the campaign and a deeper understanding of the Civil War itself.
Decisions of the Atlanta Campaign is the fifth in a series of books that will explore the critical decisions of major campaigns and battles of the Civil War.
Decisions of the Vicksburg Campaign explores the critical decisions made by Confederate and Federal commanders during the battle and how these decisions shaped its outcome. Rather than offering a history of the battle, Larry Peterson hones in on a sequence of critical decisions made by commanders on both sides of the contest to provide a blueprint of the battles for Vicksburg at their tactical core. Identifying and exploring the critical decisions in this way allows students of the battles to progress from a knowledge of what happened to a mature grasp of why events unfolded as they did.
Complete with maps and a driving tour, Decisions of the Vicksburg Campaign is an indispensable primer, and readers looking for a concise introduction to the battle can tour this sacred ground—or read about it at their leisure—with key insights into the campaign and a deeper understanding of the Civil War itself. Decisions of the Vicksburg Campaign is the twentieth in a series of books that will explore the critical decisions of major campaigns and battles of the Civil War.
Long before popular television shows such as Dirty Jobs and The Deadliest Catch, everyday men and women---the unsung heroes of the job world---toiled in important but mostly anonymous jobs. One of those jobs was deckhand on the ore boats.
With numerous photographs and engaging stories, Deckhand offers an insider's view of both the mundane and the intriguing duties performed by deckhands on these gritty cargo vessels. Boisterous port saloons, monster ice jams, near drownings, and the daily drudgery of soogeying---cleaning dirt and grime off the ships---are just a few of the experiences Mickey Haydamacker had as a young deckhand working on freighters of the Great Lakes in the early 1960s. Haydamacker sailed five Interlake Steamship Company boats, from the modern Elton Hoyt 2nd to the ancient coal-powered Colonel James Pickands with its backbreaking tarp-covered hatches.
Deckhand will appeal to shipping buffs and to anyone interested in Great Lakes shipping and maritime history as it chronicles the adventures of living on the lakes from the seldom-seen view of a deckhand.
Mickey Haydamacker spent his youth as a deckhand sailing on the freighters of the Great Lakes. During the 1962 and '63 seasons Nelson sailed five different Interlake Steamship Company ore boats. He later went on to become an arson expert with the Michigan State Police, retiring with the rank of Detective Sergeant.
Alan D. Millar, to whom Haydamacker related his tale of deckhanding, spent his career as a gift store owner and often wrote copy for local newspaper, TV, and radio.
Arriving at the port of New York in 1882, a 27-year-old Oscar Wilde quipped he had “nothing to declare but my genius.” But as Roy Morris, Jr., reveals in this sparkling narrative, Wilde was, for the first time in his life, underselling himself. A chronicle of the sensation that was Wilde’s eleven-month speaking tour of America, Declaring His Genius offers an indelible portrait of both Oscar Wilde and the Gilded Age.
Wilde covered 15,000 miles, delivered 140 lectures, and met everyone who was anyone. Dressed in satin knee britches and black silk stockings, the long-haired apostle of the British Aesthetic Movement alternately shocked, entertained, and enlightened a spellbound nation. Harvard students attending one of his lectures sported Wildean costume, clutching sunflowers and affecting world-weary poses. Denver prostitutes enticed customers by crying: “We know what makes a cat wild, but what makes Oscar Wilde?” Whitman hoisted a glass to his health, while Ambrose Bierce denounced him as a fraud.
Wilde helped alter the way post–Civil War Americans—still reeling from the most destructive conflict in their history—understood themselves. In an era that saw rapid technological changes, social upheaval, and an ever-widening gap between rich and poor, he delivered a powerful anti-materialistic message about art and the need for beauty. Yet Wilde too was changed by his tour. Having conquered America, a savvier, more mature writer was ready to take on the rest of the world. Neither Wilde nor America would ever be the same.
How we see depends on where we are in our lives and with whom we travel. Leff chose his companions wisely. In consecutive journeys his neighbor and friend Alan, a veteran city planner; his son Josh, an energetic eleven-year-old; and his sweetheart Pamela, a compassionate professional caregiver, added their perspectives to Leff’s own experiences as a government official in natural resources policy. Not so much sight seeing as sight seeking, together they explored a geography of the imagination as well as the rich natural and human histories of the rivers and their communities.
The heightened awareness of deep travel demands that we immerse ourselves fully in places and realize that they exist in time as well as space. Its mindfulness enriches the experience and makes the voyager worthy of the journey. Leff’s intriguing, contemplative deep travel along these historic rivers presents a methodology for exploration that will enrich any trip.
This book presents, for the first time in English, all of Al-Aswany’s columns from the period, a comprehensive account of the turmoil of the post-revolutionary years, and a portrait of a country and a people in flux. Each column is presented along with a context-setting introduction, as well as notes and a glossary, all designed to give non-Egyptian readers the background they need to understand the events and figures that Al-Aswany chronicles. The result is a definitive portrait of Egypt today—how it got here, and where it might be headed.
The Old West has been viewed from many perspectives, from the scornful to the uncritically romantic. But seldom has it been treated with the honest nostalgia of the wonderful accounts and pictures gathered in Denver in Slices.
Ohio University Press/Swallow Press is proud to reissue this Western classic, which includes a brief survey of all Denver history, some slices depicting the most fascinating places and characters. The City Ditch, Cherry Creek, River Front Park, the Denver Mint, the Tabors, the Windsor Hotel, the Baron of Montclair, Overland Park, Buffalo Bill, Elitch's Gardens, and Eugene Field—they're all here. Illustrating these stories is an array of nearly one hundred pictures of the people, buildings, and street scenes: a fascinating panorama of the gold rush camp that became the Rocky Mountain metropolis.
With a new foreword by renowned Denver historian Thomas J. Noel, this classic will once again help preserve Denver's lively past.
Antiquity’s original travel guide.
Pausanias, born probably in Lydia in Asia Minor, was a Greek of the second century AD, about 120–180, who traveled widely not only in Asia Minor, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa, but also in Greece and in Italy, including Rome. He left a description of Greece in ten books, which is like a topographical guidebook or tour of Attica, the Peloponnese, and central Greece, filled out with historical accounts and events and digressions on facts and wonders of nature. His chief interest was in monuments of art and architecture, especially the most famous of them; the accuracy of his descriptions is proved by surviving remains.
The Loeb Classical Library edition of Pausanias is in five volumes; the fifth volume contains maps, plans, illustrations, and a general index.
Antiquity’s original travel guide.
Pausanias, born probably in Lydia in Asia Minor, was a Greek of the second century AD, about 120–180, who traveled widely not only in Asia Minor, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa, but also in Greece and in Italy, including Rome. He left a description of Greece in ten books, which is like a topographical guidebook or tour of Attica, the Peloponnese, and central Greece, filled out with historical accounts and events and digressions on facts and wonders of nature. His chief interest was in monuments of art and architecture, especially the most famous of them; the accuracy of his descriptions is proved by surviving remains.
The Loeb Classical Library edition of Pausanias is in five volumes; the fifth volume contains maps, plans, illustrations, and a general index.
Antiquity’s original travel guide.
Pausanias, born probably in Lydia in Asia Minor, was a Greek of the second century AD, about 120–180, who traveled widely not only in Asia Minor, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa, but also in Greece and in Italy, including Rome. He left a description of Greece in ten books, which is like a topographical guidebook or tour of Attica, the Peloponnese, and central Greece, filled out with historical accounts and events and digressions on facts and wonders of nature. His chief interest was in monuments of art and architecture, especially the most famous of them; the accuracy of his descriptions is proved by surviving remains.
The Loeb Classical Library edition of Pausanias is in five volumes; the fifth volume contains maps, plans, illustrations, and a general index.
Antiquity’s original travel guide.
Pausanias, born probably in Lydia in Asia Minor, was a Greek of the second century AD, about 120–180, who traveled widely not only in Asia Minor, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa, but also in Greece and in Italy, including Rome. He left a description of Greece in ten books, which is like a topographical guidebook or tour of Attica, the Peloponnese, and central Greece, filled out with historical accounts and events and digressions on facts and wonders of nature. His chief interest was in monuments of art and architecture, especially the most famous of them; the accuracy of his descriptions is proved by surviving remains.
The Loeb Classical Library edition of Pausanias is in five volumes; the fifth volume contains maps, plans, illustrations, and a general index.
Antiquity’s original travel guide.
Pausanias, born probably in Lydia in Asia Minor, was a Greek of the second century AD, about 120–180, who traveled widely not only in Asia Minor, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa, but also in Greece and in Italy, including Rome. He left a description of Greece in ten books, which is like a topographical guidebook or tour of Attica, the Peloponnese, and central Greece, filled out with historical accounts and events and digressions on facts and wonders of nature. His chief interest was in monuments of art and architecture, especially the most famous of them; the accuracy of his descriptions is proved by surviving remains.
The Loeb Classical Library edition of Pausanias is in five volumes; the fifth volume contains maps, plans, illustrations, and a general index.
Southwest Book of the Year Award Winner
Pubwest Book Design Award Winner
Drawing on thousands of years of foodways, Tucson cuisine blends the influences of Indigenous, Mexican, mission-era Mediterranean, and ranch-style cowboy food traditions. This book offers a food pilgrimage, where stories and recipes demonstrate why the desert city of Tucson became American’s first UNESCO City of Gastronomy.
Both family supper tables and the city’s trendiest restaurants feature native desert plants and innovative dishes incorporating ancient agricultural staples. Award-winning writer Carolyn Niethammer deliciously shows how the Sonoran Desert’s first farmers grew tasty crops that continue to influence Tucson menus and how the arrival of Roman Catholic missionaries, Spanish soldiers, and Chinese farmers influenced what Tucsonans ate.
White Sonora wheat, tepary beans, and criollo cattle steaks make Tucson’s cuisine unique. In A Desert Feast, you’ll see pictures of kids learning to grow food at school, and you’ll meet the farmers, small-scale food entrepreneurs, and chefs who are dedicated to growing and using heritage foods. It’s fair to say, “Tucson tastes like nowhere else.”
The Desert Islands of Mexico’s Sea of Cortez is one of the few books devoted to the biogeography of this remarkable part of the world. The book explores the geologic origin of the gulf and its islands, presents some of the basics of island biogeography, details insular life—including residents of the intertidal zone —and provides a brief outlook for preserving this area. More than a simple guidebook, Aitchison’s writing will take both actual and armchair travelers through a gripping tale of natural history.
Like the rest of our fragile planet, the Sea of Cortez and its islands are threatened by humans. Overfishing has eliminated or greatly diminished many fish stocks, and dams on rivers that once flowed into the gulf prevent certain nutrients from reaching the sea. The tenuousness of this area makes the book’s extraordinary photographs and the firsthand descriptions by a well-known teacher, writer, and photographer all the more compelling.
"You come to trust her company and to savor her observations: she is the sort of guide who gestures at what you would otherwise step across—or on—without noticing. She calls her collection 'an introduction to particulars.' These she infuses with radiance." —Los Angeles Times Book Review
"With prose that is both lyrical and down-to-earth, Kappel-Smith makes readers aware of the fragility of the desert and the necessity to preserve these wonderful, alien and mysterious places." —San Francisco Chronicle
"We glimpse moments of experience, rendered both in words and in conscientious line drawings. The book has a gentle, meandering tone. It consciously refuses to manufacture dramatic events." —Christian Science Monitor
An informative handbook and introduction to the Midwest's colorful past, Destination Heartland provides travelers with a knowledgeable companion on the highways and backroads of history.
States covered in the book: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.
Destruction and Sorrow beneath the Heavens is both a travel memoir and the chronicle of a distinct intellectual shift as one of the most captivating contemporary writers and thinkers begins to engage with the cultures of Asia and the legacies of its interactions with Europe in a newly globalized society. Rendered in English by award-winning translator Ottilie Mulzet, Destruction and Sorrow beneath the Heavens is an important work, marking the emergence of Krasznahorkai as a truly global novelist.
Praise for Krasznahorkai
“The contemporary Hungarian master of the apocalypse.”—Susan Sontag
“Krasznahorkai delights in unorthodox description; no object is too insignificant for his worrying gaze. . . . He offers us stories that are relentlessly generative and defiantly irresolvable. They are haunting, pleasantly weird, and ultimately, bigger than the worlds they inhabit.”—New York Times
“Krasznahorkai is an expert with the complexity of human obsessions. Each of his books feel like an event, a revelation.”—Daily Beast
Contributors. Hōkūlani K. Aikau, Malia Akutagawa, Adele Balderston, Kamanamaikalani Beamer, Ellen-Rae Cachola, Emily Cadiz, Iokepa Casumbal-Salazar, David A. Chang, Lianne Marie Leda Charlie, Greg Chun, Joy Lehuanani Enomoto, S. Joe Estores, Nicholas Kawelakai Farrant, Jessica Ka‘ui Fu, Candace Fujikane, Linda H. L. Furuto, Sonny Ganaden, Cheryl Geslani, Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez, Noelani Goodyear-Ka‘ōpua, Tina Grandinetti, Craig Howes, Aurora Kagawa-Viviani, Noelle M. K. Y. Kahanu, Haley Kailiehu, Kyle Kajihiro, Halena Kapuni-Reynolds, Terrilee N. Kekoolani-Raymond, Kekuewa Kikiloi, William Kinney, Francesca Koethe, Karen K. Kosasa, N. Trisha Lagaso Goldberg, Kapulani Landgraf, Laura E. Lyons, David Uahikeaikalei‘ohu Maile, Brandy Nālani McDougall, Davianna Pōmaika‘i McGregor, Laurel Mei-Singh, P. Kalawai‘a Moore, Summer Kaimalia Mullins-Ibrahim, Jordan Muratsuchi, Hanohano Naehu, Malia Nobrega-Olivera, Katrina-Ann R. Kapā‘anaokalāokeola Nākoa Oliveira, Jamaica Heolimelekalani Osorio, No‘eau Peralto, No‘u Revilla, Kalaniua Ritte, Maya L. Kawailanaokeawaiki Saffery, Dean Itsuji Saranillio, Noenoe K. Silva, Ty P. Kāwika Tengan, Stephanie Nohelani Teves, Stan Tomita, Mehana Blaich Vaughan, Wendy Mapuana Waipā, Julie Warech
Influenced by the works of anthropologists Ruth Behar and Renato Rosaldo, the scholars and journalists in this volume consider how first encounters—those initial, awkward attempts to learn about a culture and a people—evolved into enduring and critical engagements. Contemplating the ethics and racial politics of traveling and doing research abroad, they call attention to the power and privilege that permit researchers to enter people’s lives, ask intimate questions, and publish those disclosures. Focusing on Latin America and the Caribbean, they ask, Why this place? What keeps us coming back? And what role do we play in producing narratives of inequality, uneven development, and global spectacle?
The book examines the “politics of return”—the experiences made possible by revisiting a field site over extended periods of time—of scholars and journalists who have spent decades working in and writing about Latin America and the Caribbean. Contributors aren’t telling a story of enlightenment and goodwill; they focus instead on the slippages and conundrums that marked them and raised questions of their own intentions and intellectual commitments.
Speaking from the intersection of race, class, and gender, the contributors explore the hubris and nostalgia that motivate returning again and again to a particular place. Through personal stories, they examine their changing ideas of Latin America and the Caribbean and how those places have shaped the people they’ve become, as writers, as teachers, and as activists.
In DH Lawrence in Italy, Owen reconstructs the drama leading up to the creation of one of the most controversial novels of all time by drawing on the unpublished letters and diaries of Rina Secker, the Anglo-Italian wife of Lawrence’s publisher. In addition to telling the story of the origins of Lady Chatterley, DH Lawrence in Italy explores Lawrence’s passion for all things Italian, tracking his path to the Riviera from Lake Garda to Lerici, Abruzzo, Capri, Sicily, and Sardinia.
Originally published in 1939 as volume seven of the Utah Historical Quarterly, Thompson’s journal is reprinted here for the first time in seventy years. Co-published with the Utah State Historical Society.
This volume provides insight from leading scholars who have begun to reassess the significance of Massachusetts in the author's life and work. The collection begins with a broad biographical and historical overview taken from the full-length narrative of the award-winning exhibition Dickens and Massachusetts: A Tale of Power and Transformation, which attracted thousands of visitors while on display in Lowell. Abundant images from the exhibition, many of them difficult to find elsewhere, enhance the story of Dickens's relationship with the vibrant cultural and intellectual life of Massachusetts. The second section includes essays that consider the importance of Dickens's many connections to the commonwealth.
In addition to the volume editors, contributors include Chelsea Bray, Iain Crawford, Andre DeCuir, Natalie McKnight, Lillian Nayder, and Kit Polga.
In five walks through central London, Peter Clark explores “The First Suburbs”—Camden Town, Chelsea, Greenwich, Hampstead, Highgate and Limehouse—as they feature in Dickens’s writing and illuminates the settings of Dickens’s life and his greatest works of journalism and fiction. Describing these storied spaces of today’s central London in intimate detail, Clark invites us to experience the city as it was known to Dickens and his characters. These walks take us through the locations and buildings that he interacted with and wrote about, creating an imaginative reconstruction of the Dickensian world that has been lost to time.
Savage includes information on the place-names of all 1,188 incorporated and unincorporated communities in Iowa that meet at least two of the following qualifications: twenty-five or more residents; a retail business; an annual celebration or festival; a school; church, or cemetery; a building on the National Register of Historic Places; a zip-coded post office; or an association with a public recreation site. If a town’s name has changed over the years, he provides information about each name; if a name’s provenance is unclear, he provides possible explanations. He also includes information about the state’s name and about each of its ninety-nine counties as well as a list of ghost towns. The entries range from the counties of Adair to Wright and from the towns of Abingdon to Zwingle; from Iowa’s oldest town, Dubuque, starting as a mining camp in the 1780s and incorporated in 1841, to its newest, Maharishi Vedic City, incorporated in 2001.
The imaginations and experiences of its citizens played a role in the naming of Iowa’s communities, as did the hopes of the huge influx of immigrants who settled the state in the 1800s. Tom Savage’s dictionary of place-names provides an appealing genealogical and historical background to today’s map of Iowa.
“It is one of the beauties of Iowa that travel across the state brings a person into contact with so many wonderful names, some of which a traveler may understand immediately, but others may require a bit of investigation. Like the poet Stephen Vincent Benét, we have fallen in love with American names. They are part of our soul, be they family names, town names, or artifact names. We identify with them and are identified with them, and we cannot live without them. This book will help us learn more about them and integrate them into our beings.”—from the foreword by Loren N. Horton
“Primghar, O’Brien County. Primghar was established by W. C. Green and James Roberts on November 8, 1872. The name of the town comes from the initials of the eight men who were instrumental in developing it. A short poem memorializes the men and their names:
Pumphrey, the treasurer, drives the first nail;
Roberts, the donor, is quick on his trail;
Inman dips slyly his first letter in;
McCormack adds M, which makes the full Prim;
Green, thinking of groceries, gives them the G;
Hayes drops them an H, without asking a fee;
Albright, the joker, with his jokes all at par;
Rerick brings up the rear and crowns all ‘Primghar.’
Primghar was incorporated on February 15, 1888.”
Gaffney’s reflective photographs emphasize the rough perfection of the landscape; Crimmel’s pensive meditations and his river expertise combine to create a rare point of view, one that ventures into places the guidebooks don’t go. But this narrative is more than tribute—it is a reminder of the fragile nature of desert places. Crimmel lyrically combines his descriptions with an examination of the complex issues relevant to managing public lands—invasive species, tourism, dams, endangered flora and fauna—to address the contradictions inherent in “managed wilderness.” Over four seasons and multiple trips, Crimmel and Gaffney have captured the rivers’ sense of place, creating a portrait of a dazzling high desert landscape that needs to be appreciated and protected.
Did you know—
—that a New Jerseyan was the first president of the United States?
—that New Jersey was the site of the first organized college football game?
—that New Jersey was the location of one of the most devastating espionage attacks of World War I?
—that the heroics of a New Jersey woman saved thousands of people from dying of yellow fever?
These and other fascinating stores can be found in Discover the Hidden New Jersey, a treasury of New Jersey stories that celebrate the unique heritage and importance of the Garden State. Russell Roberts has scoured New Jersey, from High Point to Cape May, to bring readers a delightful potpourri of facts, essays, lists, photos, stories, and legends about New Jersey. Readers will learn how New Jersey used to be the center of the motion picture universe, the origin of the Jersey Devil and other popular tall tales, where Norman Mailer and Abbot & Costello were born, where Aaron Burr and Leo, the M-G-M lion, lie buried, and much more. Learn about the geology of New Jersey, find out about the state’s ever-changing weather, and hear about some of the best places to go for the day. All this and more is in Discover the Hidden New Jersey, the ultimate New Jersey book.
For those who wish to unlock the mysteries of Baja California, geologist Markes Johnson offers the key. He has taken a body of technical research on the geology and paleontology of the region and made it accessible in plain language for anyone who visits the peninsula, whether for study or recreation. His book teaches general concepts in coastal geomorphology and tectonics, as well as the basic geological and natural history of the Gulf of California, in a conversive, intellectually stimulating fashion.
Johnson's guide takes the form of six day-long hikes in the area of Punta Chivato on the east coast of the southern Baja California peninsula. Punta Chivato is presented as a microcosm of the entire region; it can enable visitors to better understand major themes in the natural history of the Gulf of California and its geological past. All of the hikes begin at the southeast corner of the Punta Chivato promontory and loop out in different directions. Each circuit is designed to minimize overlap with adjacent hikes and to maximize the visitor's exposure to instructive variations in the landscape. Each chapter features additional reflections on a geologist of another time and place who has advanced the field in a way that elucidates the material covered in that chapter. Through these asides, readers will learn the basic lessons about how geologists read the secrets hidden in landscapes.
Discovering the Geology of Baja California invites visitors to these shores to explore not only rocks and fossils but also the continuum of past ecosystems with the ecology of the present. It offers both an unparalleled guide to a remote area and a new understanding of life caught in an endless cycle of change.
In Dispatches from Dystopia, Brown wanders the Chernobyl Zone of Alienation, first on the Internet and then in person, to figure out which version—the real or the virtual—is the actual forgery. She also takes us to the basement of a hotel in Seattle to examine the personal possessions left in storage by Japanese-Americans on their way to internment camps in 1942. In Uman, Ukraine, we hide with Brown in a tree in order to witness the annual male-only Rosh Hashanah celebration of Hasidic Jews. In the Russian southern Urals, she speaks with the citizens of the small city of Kyshtym, where invisible radioactive pollutants have mysteriously blighted lives. Finally, Brown returns home to Elgin, Illinois, in the midwestern industrial rust belt to investigate the rise of “rustalgia” and the ways her formative experiences have inspired her obsession with modernist wastelands.
Dispatches from Dystopia powerfully and movingly narrates the histories of locales that have been silenced, broken, or contaminated. In telling these previously unknown stories, Brown examines the making and unmaking of place, and the lives of the people who remain in the fragile landscapes that are left behind.
In a remote Himalayan village in 1721, the Jesuit priest Ippolito Desideri awaited permission from Rome to continue his mission to convert the Tibetan people to Christianity. In the meantime, he forged ahead with an ambitious project: a treatise, written in classical Tibetan, that would refute key Buddhist doctrines. If he could convince the Buddhist monks that these doctrines were false, thought Desideri, he would dispel the darkness of idolatry from Tibet.
Offering a fascinating glimpse into the historical encounter between Christianity and Buddhism, Dispelling the Darkness brings Desideri’s Tibetan writings to readers of English for the first time. This authoritative study provides extended excerpts from Inquiry concerning the Doctrines of Previous Lives and Emptiness, Desideri’s unfinished masterpiece, as well as a full translation of Essence of the Christian Religion, a companion work that broadens his refutation of Buddhism. Desideri possessed an unusually sophisticated understanding of Buddhism and a masterful command of the classical Tibetan language. He believed that only careful argumentation could demolish the philosophical foundations of Buddhism, especially the doctrines of rebirth and emptiness that prevented belief in the existence of God. Donald Lopez and Thupten Jinpa’s detailed commentary reveals how Desideri deftly used Tibetan literary conventions and passages from Buddhist scriptures to make his case.
When the Vatican refused Desideri’s petition, he returned to Rome, his manuscripts in tow, where they languished unread in archives. Dispelling the Darkness brings these vital texts to light after centuries of neglect.
Disruptive Situations challenges representations of contemporary Beirut as an exceptional space for LGBTQ people by highlighting everyday life in a city where violence is the norm. Ghassan Moussawi, a Beirut native, seeks to uncover the underlying processes of what he calls “fractal orientalism,” a relational understanding of modernity and cosmopolitanism that illustrates how transnational discourses of national and sexual exceptionalism operate on multiple scales in the Arab world.
Moussawi’s intrepid ethnography features the voices of women, gay men and genderqueers in Beirut to examine how queer individuals negotiate life in this uncertain region. He examines “al-wad’,” or “the situation,” to understand the practices that form these strategies and to raise questions about queer-friendly spaces in and beyond Beirut.
Disruptive Situations alsoshows how LGBTQ Beirutis resist reconciliation narratives and position their identities and visibility at different times as ways of simultaneously managing their multiple positionalities and al-wad’. Moussawi argues that the daily survival strategies in Beirut are queer—and not only enacted by LGBTQ people—since Beirutis are living amidst an already queer situation of ongoing precarity.
How does music played and heard over many years inform one’s sense of home? Writing during the COVID-19 pandemic, when travel is forbidden and distance felt anew, Edward Dusinberre, first violinist of the world-renowned Takács Quartet, searches for answers in the music of composers whose relationships to home shaped the pursuit of their craft—Antonín Dvořák, Edward Elgar, Béla Bartók, and Benjamin Britten.
Dusinberre has lived abroad for three decades. At the age of 21, he left his native England to pursue music studies at the Juilliard School in New York. Three years later he moved to Boulder, Colorado. Drawn to the stories of Dvořák’s, Bartók’s, and Britten’s American sojourns as they tried to reconcile their new surroundings with nostalgia for their homelands, Dusinberre reflects on his own evolving relationship to England and the idea of home. As he visits and imagines some of the places crucial to these composers’ creative inspiration, Dusinberre also reflects on Elgar’s unusual Piano Quintet and the landscapes that inspired it.
Combining travel writing with revealing insights into the working lives of string quartet musicians, Distant Melodies is a moving and humorous meditation on the relationship between music and home.
A Dog Lover’s Guide to Hiking Wisconsin’s State Parks divides Wisconsin into five regions and further details specific trails, graded for dog reactivity as well as the fitness level of human and canine alike. St. Louis also helpfully notes the availability of nearby facilities such as bathrooms, water stations, trashcans, designated dog swimming areas, and veterinarians. Truly one of a kind, this book is a must have for any Wisconsin dog lover looking to go out into nature with their pup.
A picturesque peninsula with 298 miles of Lake Michigan shoreline, state parks, forests, and cozy inns, Door County is one of the Midwest’s prime tourist attractions. Magill Weber explores the many recreational opportunities available to visitors, including secret spots known only to locals and longtime seasonal residents. Wisconsin native Janet Mrazek contributes 125 detailed and easy-to-follow maps. With suggestions of more than 150 scenic hikes, biking and paddling routes, end-of-the-road beaches, lighthouses, and wildlife-watching sites, and descriptions of the local flora and fauna, Door County Outdoors is the ultimate guide for active travelers and nature enthusiasts.
With its magnificent forests, bluffs, and shoreline and its breathtaking views of Green Bay and Lake Michigan, Door County’s Peninsula State Park is one of the Midwest’s most popular attractions. Established in 1909, it was Wisconsin’s second state park and a key to pioneering efforts to build a state park system that would be the envy of the nation.
Door County’s Emerald Treasure explores the rich history of the park land, from its importance to Native Americans and early European settlers through the twentieth century. Bill Tishler engagingly relates the role of conservationists and progressives in establishing the state park, its growing popularity for tourism and recreation, and efforts to protect the park’s resources from a variety of threats. Tishler also tells a larger story of Americans’ intimate relationship with the land around them and the challenge to create accessible public spaces that preserve the natural environment.
Teamed with scientists and other volunteer naturalists, Zwinger was part of an ongoing study of change along the Colorado. In all seasons and all weathers, in almost every kind of craft that goes down the waves, she returned to the Grand Canyon again and again to explore, look, and listen. From the thrill of running the rapids to the wonder in a grain of sand, her words take the reader down 280 miles of the "ever-flowing, energetic, whooping and hollering, galloping" river.
Zwinger's book begins with a bald eagle count at Nankoweap Creek in January and ends with a subzero, snowy walk out of the canyon at winter solstice. Between are the delights of spring in side canyons, the benediction of rain on a summer beach, and the chill that comes off limestone walls in November.
Her eye for detail catches the enchantment of small things played against the immensity of the river: the gatling-gun love song of tree frogs; the fragile beauty of an evening primrose; ravens "always in close attendance, like lugubrious, sharp-eyed, nineteenth-century undertakers"; and a golden eagle chasing a trout "with wings akimbo like a cleaning lady after a cockroach."
As she travels downstream, Zwinger follows others in history who have risked—and occasionally lost—their lives on the Colorado. Hiking in narrow canyons, she finds cliff dwellings and broken pottery of prehistoric Indians. Rounding a bend or running a rapid, she remembers the triumphs and tragedies of early explorers and pioneers. She describes the changes that have come with putting a big dam on a big river and how the dam has affected the riverine flora and fauna as well as the rapids and their future.
Science in the hands of a poet, this captivating book is for armchair travelers who may never see the grandiose Colorado and for those who have run it wisely and well. Like the author, readers will find themselves bewitched by the color and flow of the river, and enticed by what's around the next bend. With her, they will find its rhythms still in the mind, long after the splash and spray and pound are gone.
The Green River, the most significant tributary of the Colorado River, runs 730 miles from the glaciers of Wyoming to the desert canyons of Utah. Over its course, it meanders through ranches, cities, national parks, endangered fish habitats, and some of the most significant natural gas fields in the country, as it provides water for 33 million people. Stopped up by dams, slaked off by irrigation, and dried up by cities, the Green is crucial, overused, and at-risk, now more than ever.
Fights over the river’s water, and what’s going to happen to it in the future, are longstanding, intractable, and only getting worse as the West gets hotter and drier and more people depend on the river with each passing year. As a former raft guide and an environmental reporter, Heather Hansman knew these fights were happening, but she felt driven to see them from a different perspective—from the river itself. So she set out on a journey, in a one-person inflatable pack raft, to paddle the river from source to confluence and see what the experience might teach her. Mixing lyrical accounts of quiet paddling through breathtaking beauty with nights spent camping solo and lively discussions with farmers, city officials, and other people met along the way, Downriver is the story of that journey, a foray into the present—and future—of water in the West.
The Driftless Reader gathers writings that highlight the unique natural and cultural history, landscape, and literature of this region that encompasses southwestern Wisconsin and adjacent Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois. The more than eighty selected texts include writings by Black Hawk, Mark Twain, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Frank Lloyd Wright, Aldo Leopold, David Rhodes, and many other Native people, explorers, scientists, historians, farmers, songwriters, journalists, and poets. Paintings, photographs, maps, and other images complement the texts, providing a deeper appreciation of this region's layered natural and human history.
Highlights include excerpts and art from:
Carol Ryrie Brink
William Cronon
John T. Curtis
August Derleth
Richard Eberhart
Fabu
Hamlin Garland
Pedro Guerrero
Hoowaneka (Little Elk)
Juliet Kinzie
Patty Loew
Ben Logan
Truman Lowe
Jacques Marquette
Ken McCullough
Edna Meudt
Mountain Wolf Woman
Zebulon Pike
Henry Schoolcraft
Clifford D. Simak
Wallace Stegner
Pearl Swiggum
Frank Utpatel
Mark Wunderlich
Phipps presents the 104 color photographs in Driving a Table Down—selected from more than 2,000 photographs taken over the twelve-day trip—in sequential order to show, in his words, “what does and does not change as one travels through shifting cultural and geographic regions.” By capturing the present moment while referencing the past with faded signs, almost obliterated murals, closed businesses in quiet towns, forgotten tourist attractions, and many other layers of historical accumulations, the photographs illustrate the stark fact that the present is never entirely present tense. Phipps’s attention to the real-time details of rural regions of the Midwest and the South, juxtaposed with personal photographs of his family, gives us a momentary definition of America in a state of flux, an America that looks to the past in a time of an uncertain future.
Here, Ken Lamberton finds his way through a lifetime of exploring southern Arizona’s Santa Cruz River. This river—dry, still, and silent one moment, a thundering torrent of mud the next—serves as a reflection of the desert around it: a hint of water on parched sand, a path to redemption across a thirsty landscape.
With his latest book, Lamberton takes us on a trek across the land of three nations—the United States, Mexico, and the Tohono O’odham Nation—as he hikes the river’s path from its source and introduces us to people who draw identity from the river—dedicated professionals, hardworking locals, and the author’s own family. These people each have their own stories of the river and its effect on their lives, and their narratives add immeasurable richness and depth to Lamberton’s own astute observations and picturesque descriptions.
Unlike books that detail only the Santa Cruz’s decline, Dry River offers a more balanced, at times even optimistic, view of the river that ignites hope for reclamation and offers a call to action rather than indulging in despair and resignation. At once a fascinating cultural history lesson and an important reminder that learning from the past can help us fix what we have damaged, Dry River is both a story about the amazing complexity of this troubled desert waterway and a celebration of one man’s lifelong journey with the people and places touched by it.
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