Results by title
368 books match the query 'West' and 24 start with s
Sabino Canyon
The Life of a Southwestern OasisDavid Wentworth Lazaroff
University of Arizona Press, 1993
David Lazaroff has called on years of studying, photographing, and educating people about Sabino Canyon to produce this clearly written and beautifully illustrated book. Focusing on the importance of Sabino Creek both to plants and animals and to human recreation, he tracks the ebb and flow of canyon life through the year and tells how people have sought to utilize the canyon through history. First-time visitors to Sabino Canyon will find their experience enriched through Lazaroff's insights into plants, animals, and geology, while those who regularly frequent Sabino's trails or pools can become better informed about its fragile desert and riparian habitats.
For anyone curious about life in a genuine Southwestern oasis, this book captures the beauty and uniqueness of a natural treasure-house located in a bustling city's back yard.
Shaping Tradition
Women's Roles in Ceremonial Rituals of the AgwaguneDavid Uru Iyam
University of Wisconsin Press, 2021
Using this community as a case study, David Uru Iyam asserts that these women are not stereotypically submissive, oppressed, or passive. Agwagune women participate in male ceremonies by pretending to be unaware of them, concealing their authority under a veneer of secrecy. Instead of focusing on obvious male political power, Iyam highlights the overlooked domestic and public contributions of women that uphold—and change—entire social systems.
Shots in the Dark
Japan, Zen, and the WestShoji Yamada
University of Chicago Press, 2009
In the years after World War II, Westerners and Japanese alike elevated Zen to the quintessence of spirituality in Japan. Pursuing the sources of Zen as a Japanese ideal, Shoji Yamada uncovers the surprising role of two cultural touchstones: Eugen Herrigel’s Zen in the Art of Archery and the Ryoanji dry-landscape rock garden. Yamada shows how both became facile conduits for exporting and importing Japanese culture.
First published in German in 1948 and translated into Japanese in 1956, Herrigel’s book popularized ideas of Zen both in the West and in Japan. Yamada traces the prewar history of Japanese archery, reveals how Herrigel mistakenly came to understand it as a traditional practice, and explains why the Japanese themselves embraced his interpretation as spiritual discipline. Turning to Ryoanji, Yamada argues that this epitome of Zen in fact bears little relation to Buddhism and is best understood in relation to Chinese myth. For much of its modern history, Ryoanji was a weedy, neglected plot; only after its allegorical role in a 1949 Ozu film was it popularly linked to Zen. Westerners have had a part in redefining Ryoanji, but as in the case of archery, Yamada’s interest is primarily in how the Japanese themselves have invested this cultural site with new value through a spurious association with Zen.
Single Star of the West
The Republic of Texas, 1836-1845Kenneth W. Howell
University of North Texas Press, 2017
Sites of Insight
A Guide to Colorado Sacred PlacesJames Lough
University Press of Colorado, 2003
Skidoo
A Journey through the Ghost Towns of the American WestAlex Capus
Haus Publishing, 2013
Walking in the footsteps of bank robbers and grave diggers, desperadoes and Native Americans, beer brewers and child brides, Capus uncovers story after story of adventure, violence, and exploration. Near Salt Wells, Nevada, he learns the story of a luckless inventor whose corpse was discovered frozen in the desert, an icicle hanging from its nose. In Skidoo, California, he tells us of a brawling bartender, Hootch Simpson, who was hanged twice—once by a mob, once by the law—before being beheaded during his autopsy. And in Flagstaff, Arizona, Capus traces the long-lost origins of Route 66, as a narrow, isolated trail for Edward Fitzgerald Beale’s Camel Corps.
Packed with period detail, and told with a verve and enthusiasm to rival Pecos Bill, the stories in Skidoo are sure to enchant any lover of Western tales or America’s wild history.
Slave Trade and Abolition
Gender, Commerce, and Economic Transition in LuandaVanessa S. Oliveira
University of Wisconsin Press, 2022
Vanessa S. Oliveira traces how existing commercial networks adapted to changes in the Atlantic slave trade during the first half of the nineteenth century. Slave Trade and Abolition reveals how women known as donas (a term adapted from the title granted to noble and royal women in the Iberian Peninsula) were often important cultural brokers. Acting as intermediaries between foreign and local people, they held high socioeconomic status and even competed with the male merchants who controlled the trade. Oliveira provides rich evidence to explore the many ways this Luso-African community influenced its society. In doing so, she reveals an unexpectedly nuanced economy with regard to the dynamics of gender and authority.
Slavery and Reform in West Africa
Toward Emancipation in Nineteenth-Century Senegal and the Gold CoastTrevor R. Getz
Ohio University Press, 2004
A series of transformations, reforms, and attempted abolitions of slavery form a core narrative of nineteenth-century coastal West Africa. As the region’s role in Atlantic commercial networks underwent a gradual transition from principally that of slave exporter to producer of “legitimate goods” and dependent markets, institutions of slavery became battlegrounds in which European abolitionism, pragmatic colonialism, and indigenous agency clashed.
In Slavery and Reform in West Africa, Trevor Getz demonstrates that it was largely on the anvil of this issue that French and British policy in West Africa was forged. With distant metropoles unable to intervene in daily affairs, local European administrators, striving to balance abolitionist pressures against the resistance of politically and economically powerful local slave owners, sought ways to satisfy the latter while placating or duping the former.
The result was an alliance between colonial officials, company agents, and slave-owning elites that effectively slowed, sidetracked, or undermined serious attempts to reform slave holding. Although slavery was outlawed in both regions, in only a few isolated instances did large-scale emancipations occur. Under the surface, however, slaves used the threat of self-liberation to reach accommodations that transformed the master-slave relationship.
By comparing the strategies of colonial administrators, slave-owners, and slaves across these two regions and throughout the nineteenth century, Slavery and Reform in West Africa reveals not only the causes of the astounding success of slave owners, but also the factors that could, and in some cases did, lead to slave liberations. These findings have serious implications for the wider study of slavery and emancipation and for the history of Africa generally.
Social Movements and Political Power
Emerging Forms of Radicalism in the WestCarl Boggs
Temple University Press, 1989
Some Strange Corners of Our Country
Charles F. Lummis; Foreword by Lawrence Clark Powell
University of Arizona Press, 1989
Sonoran Desert Bestiary
A More-than-Natural HistoryText by Gary Paul Nabhan; Illustrations by Robert J. Long
University of Arizona Press, 2026
The Sonoran Desert has many marvelous and well-known creatures such as the javelina and the coyote, often found on postcards and lawn ornaments. But what about the lesser-known creatures—the ones that are underfoot yet unseen, that lurk only in the shadows and in our imaginations? In this collection of essays, prose poems, and illustrations, naturalist Gary Paul Nabhan and artist Robert J. Long team up to celebrate these unsung beings of the Sonoran Desert.
This desert bestiary includes creatures whose existence lies largely in traditional story and belief, as well as creatures whose life cycles are so cryptic they seem mythic, such as the walking catfish and the carbunco. Positioned at the dynamic intersection of folklore and natural history, the book reflects on the reasons why human imaginations over the ages have reached into this realm of seldom seen but often intuited animals. Focusing on small animals and charismatic mini-fauna, Nabhan expands our understanding of the natural world by delightfully describing the interactions between animals and plants.
This more-than-natural history is for anyone who finds joy in the marvels of the natural world.
Sonoran Desert Journeys
Ecology and Evolution of Its Iconic SpeciesTheodore H. Fleming
University of Arizona Press, 2022
In Sonoran Desert Journeys ecologist Theodore H. Fleming discusses two remarkable journeys. First, Fleming offers a brief history of our intellectual and technical journey over the past three centuries to understand the evolution of life on Earth. Next, he applies those techniques on a journey of discovery about the evolution and natural history of some of the Sonoran Desert’s most iconic animals and plants. Fleming details the daily lives of a variety of reptiles, birds, mammals, and plants, describing their basic natural and evolutionary histories and addressing intriguing issues associated with their lifestyles and how they cope with a changing climate. Finally, Fleming discusses the complexity of Sonoran Desert conservation.
This book explores the evolution and natural history of iconic animals and plants of the northern Sonoran Desert through the eyes of a curious naturalist and provides a model of how we can coexist with the unique species that call this area home.
Sounds of the New Deal
The Federal Music Project in the WestPeter Gough
University of Illinois Press, 2015
From the onset, administrators and artists debated whether to represent highbrow, popular, or folk music in FMP activities. Though the administration privileged using "good" music to educate the public, in the West local preferences regularly trumped national priorities and allowed diverse vernacular musics to be heard. African American and Hispanic music found unprecedented popularity while the cultural mosaic illuminated by American folksong exemplified the spirit of the Popular Front movement. These new musical expressions combined the radical sensibilities of an invigorated Left with nationalistic impulses. At the same time, they blended traditional patriotic themes with an awareness of the country's varied ethnic musical heritage and vast--but endangered--store of grassroots music.
Sounds of the New Deal
The Federal Music Project in the WestPeter Gough
University of Illinois Press, 2015
Spanish Peaks
Land and LegendsConger Beasley, Jr.
University Press of Colorado, 2006
Speculative Markets
Drug Circuits and Derivative Life in NigeriaKristin Peterson
Duke University Press, 2014
Spiral Jetta
A Road Trip through the Land Art of the American WestErin Hogan
University of Chicago Press, 2008
Erin Hogan hit the road in her Volkswagen Jetta and headed west from Chicago in search of the monuments of American land art: a salty coil of rocks, four hundred stainless steel poles, a gash in a mesa, four concrete tubes, and military sheds filled with cubes. Her journey took her through the states of Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas. It also took her through the states of anxiety, drunkenness, disorientation, and heat exhaustion. Spiral Jetta is a chronicle of this journey.
A lapsed art historian and devoted urbanite, Hogan initially sought firsthand experience of the monumental earthworks of the 1970s and the 1980s—Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels, Walter De Maria’s Lightning Field, James Turrell’s Roden Crater, Michael Heizer’s Double Negative, and the contemporary art mecca of Marfa, Texas. Armed with spotty directions, no compass, and less-than-desert-appropriate clothing, she found most of what she was looking for and then some.
“I was never quite sure what Hogan was looking for when she set out . . . or indeed whether she found it. But I loved the ride. In Spiral Jetta, an unashamedly honest, slyly uproarious, ever-probing book, art doesn’t magically have the power to change lives, but it can, perhaps no less powerfully, change ways of seeing.”—Tom Vanderbilt, New York Times Book Review
“The reader emerges enlightened and even delighted. . . . Casually scrutinizing the artistic works . . . while gamely playing up her fish-out-of-water status, Hogan delivers an ingeniously engaging travelogue-cum-art history.”—Atlantic
“Smart and unexpectedly hilarious.”—Kevin Nance, Chicago Sun-Times
“One of the funniest and most entertaining road trips to be published in quite some time.”—June Sawyers, Chicago Tribune
“Hogan ruminates on how the work affects our sense of time, space, size, and scale. She is at her best when she reexamines the precepts of modernism in the changing light of New Mexico, and shows how the human body is meant to be a participant in these grand constructions.”—New Yorker
Spiral Jetta
A Road Trip through the Land Art of the American WestErin Hogan
University of Chicago Press, 2008
Erin Hogan hit the road in her Volkswagen Jetta and headed west from Chicago in search of the monuments of American land art: a salty coil of rocks, four hundred stainless steel poles, a gash in a mesa, four concrete tubes, and military sheds filled with cubes. Her journey took her through the states of Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas. It also took her through the states of anxiety, drunkenness, disorientation, and heat exhaustion. Spiral Jetta is a chronicle of this journey.
A lapsed art historian and devoted urbanite, Hogan initially sought firsthand experience of the monumental earthworks of the 1970s and the 1980s—Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels, Walter De Maria’s Lightning Field, James Turrell’s Roden Crater, Michael Heizer’s Double Negative, and the contemporary art mecca of Marfa, Texas. Armed with spotty directions, no compass, and less-than-desert-appropriate clothing, she found most of what she was looking for and then some.
“I was never quite sure what Hogan was looking for when she set out . . . or indeed whether she found it. But I loved the ride. In Spiral Jetta, an unashamedly honest, slyly uproarious, ever-probing book, art doesn’t magically have the power to change lives, but it can, perhaps no less powerfully, change ways of seeing.”—Tom Vanderbilt, New York Times Book Review
“The reader emerges enlightened and even delighted. . . . Casually scrutinizing the artistic works . . . while gamely playing up her fish-out-of-water status, Hogan delivers an ingeniously engaging travelogue-cum-art history.”—Atlantic
“Smart and unexpectedly hilarious.”—Kevin Nance, Chicago Sun-Times
“One of the funniest and most entertaining road trips to be published in quite some time.”—June Sawyers, Chicago Tribune
“Hogan ruminates on how the work affects our sense of time, space, size, and scale. She is at her best when she reexamines the precepts of modernism in the changing light of New Mexico, and shows how the human body is meant to be a participant in these grand constructions.”—New Yorker
Spirit, Structure, and Flesh
Gender and Power in Yoruba African Instituted ChurchesDeidre Helen Crumbley
University of Wisconsin Press, 2008
Strangers in Berlin
Modern Jewish Literature between East and West, 1919–1933Rachel Seelig
University of Michigan Press, 2016
Author Rachel Seelig portrays Berlin during the Weimar Republic as a “threshold” between exile and homeland in which national and artistic commitments were reexamined, reclaimed, and rebuilt. In the pulsating yet precarious capital of Germany’s first fledgling democracy, the collision of East and West engendered a broad spectrum of poetic styles and Jewish national identities.
Strip Cultures
Finding America in Las VegasThe Project on Vegas
Duke University Press, 2015
Sufi Networks, Fulbe Itinerancy
A History of Islam in Senegambia, c. 1803–1996Assan Sarr
Michigan State University Press, 2026
This book traces the development and expansion of a network of itinerant Fulbe clerics in southern Senegambia who forged solidarity under the banner of Islam. Beginning with a marabout named Cherno Muhammadu Jallow (c. 1803–1883)—who expanded the Umarian branch of the Tijaniyya sect into remote parts of the region—Assan Sarr demonstrates that some Fulbe groups were not drawn into Islam until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He argues that by creating a series of villages that served as educational centers during a tumultuous period, the itinerant scholars who are at the heart of this book not only spread Islam throughout the land of the Firdu, Saloum, and parts of the Gambia region but also played a pivotal role in establishing a widely shared Muslim identity among the Fulbe people.
Sun, Sin & Suburbia
The History of Modern Las Vegas, Revised and ExpandedGeoff Schumacher
University of Nevada Press, 2015
Schumacher’s history also profiles the Las Vegas where more than two million people live. He explores the neighborhoods sprawling beyond the Strip’s neon gleam and uncovers a diverse community offering much more than table games, lounge acts, and organized crime. Schumacher discusses contemporary Las Vegas, charting its course from the nation’s fastest-growing metropolis to one of the Great Recession’s most battered victims.
Sun, Sin & Suburbia will appeal to tourists looking to understand more than the glitz and glitter of Las Vegas and to newcomers who want to learn about their new hometown. It will also be an essential addition to any longtime Nevadan’s library of local history.
First published in 2012 by Stephens Press, this paperback edition is now available from the University of Nevada Press.
Syncretism in the West
Pico's 900 Theses (1486) With Text, Translation, and CommentaryEdited by S. A. Farmer
Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2016
This is the 2016 paperback printing of the 2008 edition of the popular text, translation, and commentary by S. A. Farmer. (The 2008 edition was a revised edition of the 1998 original publication).
Published by ACMRS (Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies) in Tempe, Arizona as part of the MRTS (Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies) Series, this book -- previously available only in hardcover and otherwise out-of-print since 2014 -- is now available in its entirety in paperback format.