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In Take My Land, Take My Life, Mitchell concludes the story of the 134-year history of the U.S. government's relations with Alaska's Native people begun in Sold American:The Story of Alaska Natives and Their Land, 1867-1959. The culmination of that tale occurred in 1971 when Congress enacted the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. ANCSA authorized Alaska Natives to be paid $962.5 million and to be conveyed title to 44 million acres of land. Though highly controversial, ANCSA remains the most generous settlement of aboriginal land claims in the nation's history. Mitchell's insightful, exhaustively researched work also describes the political history during the first decade of Alaska statehood, from the rise of Native organizations such as the Alaska Federation of Natives to the battles for power in the subcommittees of Congress.

Insightful and drawn from years of painstaking research of primary source materials, Sold American and Take My Land, Take My Life are an indispensable resource for readers who are interested in the history of the nation's largest state and of the federal government's involvement with Alaska's indigenous peoples.

Only an extraordinary Texas Ranger could have cleaned up bandit-plagued Southwest Texas, between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande, in the years following the Civil War. Thousands of raiders on horseback, some of them Anglo-Americans, regularly crossed the river from Mexico to pillage, murder, and rape. Their main objective? To steal cattle, which they herded back across the Rio Grande to sell. Honest citizens found it almost impossible to live in the Nueces Strip.

In desperation, the governor of Texas called on an extraordinary man, Captain Leander M. McNelly, to take command of a Ranger company and stop these border bandits. One of McNelly's recruits for this task was George Durham, a Georgia farmboy in his teens when he joined the "Little McNellys," as the Captain's band called themselves. More than half a century later, it was George Durham, the last surviving "McNelly Ranger," who recounted the exciting tale of taming the Nueces Strip to San Antonio writer Clyde Wantland.

In Durham's account, those long-ago days are brought vividly back to life. Once again the daring McNelly leads his courageous band across Southwest Texas to victories against incredible odds. With a boldness that overcame their dismayingly small number, the McNellys succeeded in bringing law and order to the untamed Nueces Strip—succeeded so well that they antagonized certain "upright" citizens who had been pocketing surreptitious dollars from the bandits' operations.

Texas, the 1930s—the years of the Great Depression. It was the Texas of great men: Dobie, Bedichek, Webb, the young Américo Paredes. And it was the Texas of May McCord and "Cocky" Thompson, the Reverend I. B. Loud, the Cajun Marcelle Comeaux, the black man they called "Grey Ghost," and all the other extraordinary "ordinary" people whom William A. Owens met in his travels.

"Up and down and sideways" across Texas, Owens traveled. His goal: to learn for himself what the diverse peoples of the state "believed in, yearned for, laughed at, fought over, as revealed in story and song." Tell me a story, sing me a song brings together both the songs he gathered—many accompanied by music—and Owens' warm reminiscences of his travels in the Texas of the Thirties and early Forties.

Folio 46r from Codex Telleriano-Remensis was created in the sixteenth century under the supervision of Spanish missionaries in central Mexico. As an artifact of seismic cultural and political shifts, the manuscript painting is a singular document of indigenous response to Spanish conquest. Examining the ways in which the folio's tlacuilo (indigenous painter/writer) creates a pictorial vocabulary, this book embraces the place "outside" history from which this rich document emerged.

Applying contemporary intellectual perspectives, including aspects of gender, modernity, nation, and visual representation itself, José Rabasa reveals new perspectives on colonial order. Folio 46r becomes a metaphor for reading the totality of the codex and for reflecting on the postcolonial theoretical issues now brought to bear on the past. Ambitious and innovative (such as the invention of the concepts of elsewheres and ethnosuicide, and the emphasis on intuition), Tell Me the Story of How I Conquered You embraces the performative force of the native scribe while acknowledging the ineffable traits of 46r—traits that remain untenably foreign to the modern excavator/scholar. Posing provocative questions about the unspoken dialogues between evangelizing friars and their spiritual conquests, this book offers a theoretic-political experiment on the possibility of learning from the tlacuilo ways of seeing the world that dislocate the predominance of the West.

First published in 1968, this engrossing and beautiful picture book about wildlife on Isle Royale is available again

Isle Royale, “the big island” of this book, is a wilderness national park in Lake Superior and home to a unique and fascinating ecosystem of animals, most notably the iconic wolf and majestic moose. Here is author Julian May’s story about the island’s beginning, the kinds of animals that came to populate it, and their effects on the pristine landscape. Among them were the moose, who swam to the island from the distant shore to fend off starvation. The moose found conditions on Isle Royale so favorable that they reproduced quickly—but then faced another food shortage. The wolves arrived by floating to the island on an ice floe in winter and soon became important to the island’s ecology as successful predators of the moose. 

Complementing this fascinating text, John Schoenherr’s magnificent illustrations convey the strength of these animals and the beauty of the island that is their home.

First published in 1968, and reprinted here with a new note by renowned wolf expert L. David Mech, The Big Island is an enchanting introduction to the wilderness and wildlife of Isle Royale. 

During World War II, a group of physicists who had once been close friends found themselves on opposite sides of a deadly race. German scientist Werner Heisenberg and American physicists Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, and Sam Goudsmit were all leading figures in nuclear research. But after the attack on Pearl Harbor, their shared passion for science turned into a high-stakes competition to build the world’s first atomic bomb—a weapon that could determine the outcome of the war. Heisenberg had a two-year head start, and the possibility that Nazi Germany might beat the Allies to the bomb terrified American scientists. The Manhattan Project, led by U.S. Army General Leslie Groves, became a massive effort to catch up. Fear of Heisenberg haunted Manhattan Project scientists. At one point, Groves even approved plans to bomb Heisenberg’s lab and assassinate him to stop Germany’s progress. Meanwhile, Sam Goudsmit led a secret military unit tasked with tracking down Heisenberg and uncovering the truth about the Nazi nuclear program. What they found would surprise everyone. The Greatest Scientific Gamble tells the dramatic and little-known story of how personal relationships, wartime fear, and scientific ambition collided in the race to unlock the power of the atom.

The Hayloft Gang draws on the colorful commentary of performers and former listeners to analyze the National Barn Dance, its audience, and its impact. Contributors trace the history of barn dance radio, explore the paradox of a foundational country music program broadcast from a major city, investigate notions of authenticity in the presentation of country music and entertainment, and delve into provocative issues raised by the barn dance phenomenon.

Contributors: Chad Berry, Michael T. Bertrand, Lisa Krissoff Boehm, Don Cusic, Wayne W. Daniel, Loyal Jones, Kristine M. McCusker, Stephen Parry, Susan Smulyan, Paul L. Tyler, and Michael Ann Williams.

    As a member of Salvador Allende’s Personal Guards (GAP), Luz Arce worked with leaders of the Socialist Party during the Popular Unity Government from 1971 to1973. In the months following the coup, Arce served as a militant with others from the Left who opposed the military junta led by Augusto Pinochet, which controlled the country from 1973 to1990. Along with thousands of others in Chile, Arce was detained and tortured by Chile’s military intelligence service, the DINA, in their attempt to eliminate alternative voices and ideologies in the country. Arce’s testimonial offers the harrowing story of the abuse she suffered and witnessed as a survivor of detention camps, such as the infamous Villa Grimaldi.
    But when faced with threats made to her family, including her young son, and with the possibility that she could be murdered as thousands of others had been, Arce began to collaborate with the Chilean military in their repression of national resistance groups and outlawed political parties. Her testimonial thus also offers a unique perspective from within the repressive structures as she tells of her work as a DINA agent whose identifications even lead to the capture of some of her former friends and compañeros. 
    During Chile’s return to democracy in the early 1990s, Arce experienced two fundamental changes in her life that led to the writing of her story. The first was a deep spiritual renewal through her contacts with the Catholic Church whose Vicariate of Solidarity had fought for human rights in the country during the dictatorship. The second was her decision to participate within the legal system to identify and bring to justice those members of the military who were responsible for the crimes committed from 1973 to1990. Luz Arce’s book invites readers to rethink the definition of testimonial narrative in Latin America through the unique perspective of a survivor-witness-confessor.

At a time when the world is seeing its species rapidly go extinct, the Kirtland's warbler is not just a survivor, it's a rock star. The Kirtland's warbler is the rarest warbler species in North America and will always be rare because of its persnickety nesting preferences. But when the total population fell below 400 birds in the 1970s and 1980s---driven largely by a loss of habitat and the introduction of a parasite---a small group of dedicated biologists, researchers, and volunteers vowed to save the Kirtland's warbler despite long odds. This is the story of the warbler's survival and gradual recovery, the people and policies that kept it from extinction, and the ongoing challenges that may again jeopardize the bird's future.

In The Kirtland's Warbler, William Rapai explores the bird's fascinating natural history as well as the complex and evolving relationships between the warbler, its environment, its human protectors, and state and federal policies that today threaten to eradicate decades of work done on the species' behalf. Beginning with an account of the warbler's discovery in the mid-nineteenth century and ornithologists' desperate hunt for information on the elusive new species, the book goes on to examine the dramatic events that quickly led to the warbler's precarious status and its eventual emergence as a lightning rod for controversy.

The Kirtland's warbler is often described as a "bird of fire" for its preference for nesting in areas cleared by wildfire. But it also warrants the name for the passion it ignites in humans. Both tragic and uplifting, the story of this intriguing bird is a stirring example of how strong leadership, vision, commitment, sustained effort, and cooperation can come together to protect our natural world.

In the spring of 1881, W. M. D. Lee and Lucien B. Scott, wealthy businessmen of Leavenworth, Kansas, purchased land in the upper Texas Panhandle to establish the Lee-Scott Cattle Company. Their range sprawled across four Texas counties and extended into eastern New Mexico. About six months later, fifty thousand head of mixed cattle, branded LS, grazed those thousands of acres of free grass.

This book is the story of Lee and Scott’s LS Ranch from the tempestuous years of the open range to the era of “bob wire.” It is also the story of the pioneer men and women whose efforts developed the LS into a cattle empire: W. M. D. and Lena Lee, Lucien and Julia Scott, “Mister Mac” and “Miss Annie” McAllister, and Charles and Pauline Whitman.

Here are accounts of chuck wagons and wagon bosses; prairie fires, blizzards, and bog holes; ranch management problems and cowboys on strike; lobo wolves and romance; wild sprees in Tascosa and its “Hogtown” sector; LS cowboys fighting against a gang of organized rustlers in a feud that ended in tragedy; and those same cowboys on the long trails to Dodge City and Montana.

Drawing upon stories told to her by men and women who were with the LS during the 1880’s and later years, Dulcie Sullivan presents her narrative in a clear, straightforward, but sympathetic manner that gives the reader a vivid sense of how life was really lived there in those times. Especially telling is her occasional use of an almost poetic incident: the steers bedding down around a campfire to listen to the chuck-wagon cook play his fiddle, or the suit of Spanish armor found in a spring, or the hail-battered trees attempting to renew themselves, despite their grotesque shapes.

Alabama’s history and culture revealed through fourteen iconic foods, dishes, and beverages.

The Story of Alabama in Fourteen Foods explores well-known Alabama  food traditions to reveal salient histories of the state in a new way. In this book that is part history, part travelogue, and part cookbook, Emily Blejwas pays homage to fourteen emblematic foods, dishes, and beverages, one per chapter, as a lens for exploring the diverse cultures and traditions of the state.

Throughout Alabama’s history, food traditions have been fundamental  to its customs, cultures, regions, social and political movements, and events. Each featured food is deeply rooted in Alabama identity and has a story with both local and national resonance. Blejwas focuses on lesser-known food stories from around the state, illuminating the lives of a diverse populace: Poarch Creeks, Creoles of color, wild turkey hunters, civil rights activists, Alabama club women, frontier squatters, Mardi Gras revelers, sharecroppers, and Vietnamese American shrimpers, among others. A number of Alabama figures noted for their special contributions to the state’s foodways, such  as George Washington Carver and Georgia Gilmore, are profiled as well. Alabama’s rich food history also unfolds through accounts of community events and a food-based economy. Highlights include Sumter County barbecue clubs, Mobile’s banana docks, Appalachian Decoration Days, cane syrup making, peanut boils, and eggnog parties.

Drawing on historical research and interviews with home cooks, chefs, and community members cooking at local gatherings and for holidays, Blejwas details the myths, legends, and truths underlying Alabama’s beloved foodways. With nearly fifty color illustrations and fifteen recipes, The Story of Alabama in Fourteen Foods will allow all Alabamians to more fully understand their shared cultural heritage.

A breathtaking country of rugged mountain peaks, uninhabited desert, and spectacular river canyons, Big Bend is one of the United States' most remote national parks and among Texas' most popular tourist attractions. Located in the great bend of the Rio Grande that separates Texas and Mexico, the park comprises some 800,000 acres, an area larger than the state of Rhode Island, and draws over 300,000 visitors each year.

The Story of Big Bend National Park offers a comprehensive, highly readable history of the park from before its founding in 1944 up to the present. John Jameson opens with a fascinating look at the mighty efforts involved in persuading Washington officials and local landowners that such a park was needed. He details how money was raised and land acquired, as well as how the park was publicized and developed for visitors. Moving into the present, he discusses such issues as natural resource management, predator protection in the park, and challenges to land, water, and air. Along the way, he paints colorful portraits of many individuals, from area residents to park rangers to Lady Bird Johnson, whose 1966 float trip down the Rio Grande brought the park to national attention.

This history will be required reading for all visitors and prospective visitors to Big Bend National Park. For everyone concerned about our national parks, it makes a persuasive case for continued funding and wise stewardship of the parks as they face the twin pressures of skyrocketing attendance and declining budgets.

Explore how food shaped humanity in this compelling archaeological journey. 

The Story of Food in the Human Past: How What We Ate Made Us Who We Are uses case studies from recent archaeological research to tell the story of food in human prehistory. Beginning with the earliest members of our genus, Robyn E. Cutright investigates the role of food in shaping who we are as humans during the emergence of modern Homo sapiens and through major transitions in human prehistory such as the development of agriculture and the emergence of complex societies.

This fascinating study begins with a discussion of how food shaped humans in evolutionary terms by examining what makes human eating unique, the use of fire to cook, and the origins of cuisine as culture and adaptation through the example of Neandertals. The second part of the book describes how cuisine was reshaped when humans domesticated plants and animals and examines how food expressed ancient social structures and identities such as gender, class, and ethnicity. Cutright shows how food took on special meaning in feasts and religious rituals and also pays attention to the daily preparation and consumption of food as central to human society.

Cutright synthesizes recent paleoanthropological and archaeological research on ancient diet and cuisine and complements her research on daily diet, culinary practice, and special-purpose mortuary and celebratory meals in the Andes with comparative case studies from around the world to offer readers a holistic view of what humans ate in the past and what that reveals about who we are.