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 A Guide to Common Plants of Lake Mead National Recreation Area is the definitive book for weekend explorers and botanists alike who venture into LMNRA ready to discover the many wonders of the local flora. The authors highlight 183 plants that hikers are most likely to encounter along popular trails, washes, and surrounding hot springs, helping the area’s millions of annual visitors identify and enjoy these common plants. This guide includes photos and descriptions of each plant, along with a map of LMNRA.
 
The authors also provide a primer on plant ecology, including a guide to plant structures, desert adaptations and life forms, plant-to-plant interactions, and plant-animal interactions. Plants are grouped by life forms, such as tree, shrub, cactus, or grass, and by flower color within the wildflower section. The guide will encourage readers to pause and look carefully at each plant they encounter, giving them an enriched experience during their exploration.

Updated Edition

In 1879, more than 230 settlers in southwestern Utah heeded the call from leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to pull up stakes and move to the distant San Juan country of southeastern Utah. Their year-long journey became one of the most extraordinary wagon trips ever undertaken in North America, and their trail became one of peril, difficulty, and spectacular vistas. Beginning in Cedar City, Utah, this trail crosses today’s Dixie National Forest, skirts Bryce Canyon National Park, bisects Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, crosses Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, and cuts through   Bears Ears National Monument on its way to Bluff, Utah.

Though the trail that these devoted pioneers broke across the raw frontier was used for several years afterward, no highway was built over most of the route because it was deemed too rugged for modern vehicles. This updated edition features pioneer family histories and updated natural history, road logs, maps, and hiking trails along the historic route, making A Guide to Southern Utah’s Hole-in-the-Rock Trail a significant reference for a variety of readers.

Carnivores such as pumas, jaguars, and ocelots have roamed the neotropical forests of Central America for millennia. Enshrined in the myths of the ancient Maya, they still inspire awe in the region's current inhabitants, as well as in the ecotourists and researchers who come to experience Central America's diverse and increasingly endangered natural environment.

This book is one of the first field guides dedicated to the carnivores of Central America. It describes the four indigenous families—wild cats, raccoons and their relatives, skunks and their relatives, and wild canids—and their individual species that live in the region. The authors introduce each species by recounting a first-person encounter with it, followed by concise explanations of its taxonomy, scientific name, English and Spanish common names, habitat, natural history, and conservation status. Range maps show the animal's past and current distribution, while Claudia Nocke's black-and-white drawings portray it visually.

The concluding chapter looks to the carnivores' future, including threats posed by habitat destruction and other human activities, and describes some current conservation programs. Designed for citizens of and visitors to Central America, as well as specialists, this book offers an excellent introduction to a group of fascinating, threatened, and still imperfectly understood animals.

Composers have used formalized procedures to create music throughout history. With the advent of the computer, algorithmic composition allows composers not only to create and experiment with different formalisms, but to hear and evaluate results quickly. Often in algorithmic composition, the composer has only a vague idea how the output will sound, but because the input is highly automated, the composer can make adjustments to take advantage of happy accidents, program bugs, and other creative sources of sound.

Algorithmic Composition: A Guide to Composing Music with Nyquistprovides an overview of procedural approaches to music generation. It introduces programming concepts through many examples written using the Nyquist system for music composition and sound synthesis. Nyquist is freely available software, and over 100 program examples from this book are available in electronic form. Readers will be well equipped to develop their own algorithms for composition.

Music students who are learning about computer music and electronic music will all be interested in this innovative book, as generative music becomes an important part of the future of the discipline. Students and scholars in computer science will also find much to interest them, in a straightforward and fun way.

2021 Best Travel Book, International Latino Book Awards

In search of every taco variety from California to Texas and beyond, Ralat traveled from coast to coast and border to border, visiting thirty-eight cities across the country. He examines the pervasive crunchy taco and the new Alta California tacos from chefs Wes Avila, Christine Rivera, and Carlos Salgado. He tastes famous Tex-Mex tacos like the puffy taco and breakfast taco, then tracks down the fry bread taco and the kosher taco. And he searches for the regional hybrid tacos of the American South and the modern, chef-driven tacos of restaurants everywhere. Throughout, he tells the story of how each style of taco came to be, creating a rich look at the diverse taco landscape north of the border. Featuring interviews with taqueros and details on taco paraphernalia and the trappings of taco culture, American Tacos is a book no taco fan will want to take a bite without.

The first history of tacos developed in the United States, now revised and expanded, this book is the definitive survey that American taco lovers must have for their own taco explorations.

“Everything a food history book should be: illuminating, well-written, crusading, and inspiring a taco run afterwards. You’ll gain five pounds reading it, but don’t worry—most of that will go to your brain.”—Gustavo Arellano, Los Angeles Times

“[Ralat] gives an in-depth look at each taco’s history and showcases other aspects of taco culture that has solidified it as a go-to dish on dinner tables throughout the nation.”—Smithsonian Magazine

“A fascinating look at America’s many regional tacos. . . . From California’s locavore tacos to Korean ‘K-Mex’ tacos to Jewish ‘deli-Mex’ to Southern-drawl ‘Sur-Mex’ tacos to American-Indian-inspired fry bread tacos to chef-driven ‘moderno’ tacos, Ralat lays out a captivating landscape.”—Houston Chronicle

“You’ll learn an enormous and entertaining amount about [tacos] in . . . American Tacos. . . . The book literally covers the map of American tacos, from Texas and the South to New York, Chicago, Kansas City and California.”—Forbes

“An impressively reported new book . . . a fast-paced cultural survey and travel guide . . . American Tacos is an exceptional book.”—Taste

A growing interest in all things Maya brings an increasing number of visitors to prehistoric Maya ruins and contemporary Maya communities in Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, western Honduras, the Yucatán Peninsula, and the southern areas of Chiapas and Tabasco, Mexico. For these visitors and indeed everyone with an interest in the Maya, this field guide highlights nearly 100 species of plants and animals that were significant to the ancient Maya and that continue to inhabit the Maya region today.

Drawing from the disciplines of biology, ecology, and anthropology, Victoria Schlesinger describes each plant or animal's habitat and natural history, identifying characteristics (also shown in a black-and-white drawing), and cultural significance to the ancient and contemporary Maya. An introductory section explains how to use the book and offers a concise overview of the history, lifeways, and cosmology of the ancient Maya. The concluding section describes the collapse of ancient Maya society and briefly traces the history of the Maya region from colonial times to the present.