University of Nevada Press - Böcker

An engaging oral history of the 31ers who built Hoover Dam and the women who fed them, married them, and shared their lives. Building Hoover Dam is the most intriguing book yet written about one of the modern architectural wonders of the world. Andrew J. Dunar and Dennis McBride skillfully interweave first hand accounts of a fascinating group of eyewitnesses. Their stories create the richest existing portrait of the building of Hoover Dam and its tremendous effect on the lives of those involved in its creation: the gritty, sometimes grisly realities of living in cardboard boxes and tents during several of the hottest Southern Nevada summers still on record; the fearsome carbon monoxide deaths of tunnel builders who, it was claimed, had died of ""pneumonia""; the uproarious life of nearby Las Vegas versus the tightly controlled existence of the workers in the built-overnight confines of Boulder City; and of course the astounding accomplishment of building the dam itself and completing the task not only early but under budget.

An engaging look at the history of the piñon pine and its ecosystem. Combining natural history and observations of the cultural importance of the tree to both native Indians and European settlers, Lanner provides information on the management of the tree and its interdependence with the birds and animals of the piñon-juniper woodland. Science, cultural history, and ecologicall issues, plus delicious recipes using the piñon pine nuts, make for a concise natural and cultural history of the piñon pine.

Author and researcher Helen Carlson spent almost fourteen years searching for the origins of Nevada’s place names, using the maps of explorers, miners, government surveyors, and city planners and poring through historical accounts, archival documents, county records, and newspaper files. The result of her labors is Nevada Place Names, a fascinating mixture of history spiced with folklore, legend, and obscure facts. Out of print for some years, the book was reprinted in 1999.

Sand in a Whirlwind is a dramatic account of the events surrounding hostilities between settlers and Pyramid Paiutes in the spring of 1860. Thirty years after its publication Ferol Egan’s now classic tale continues to enlighten and engage readers.

In this scholarly work, Zirakzadeh argues that there is a calculated reasoning behind ETA's political violence that is often overlooked by researchers. His book is a comprehensive account of the Basque region's grassroots politics.

This pocket-sized Basque-English, English-Basque dictionary was designed for a broad audience—studens, teachers, people of Basque descent, and travelers—and contains definitions of the most commonly used Basque and English words. This compact softcover volume is the condensed version of the two larger dictionaries, Basque-English Dictionary and English-Basque Dictionary. These two comprehensive reference works were highly praised by critics and well received by the public. Prepared by two scholars of the Basque language, this streamlined volume is an indispensable aid for students, travelers, and those who need to translate quickly between Basque and English. The unified Batua dialect is emphasized.

Ott provides an excellent ethnography of a French Basque agrarian and sheepherding community. The commune of Sainte-Engrâce extends along a mountain valley in the southeastern corner of Soule, one of the three Basque provences in France. In The Circle of Mountains, Sandra Ott examines the importance of cooperation and reciprocity as the essential basis for the main institutions within this community. These French Basques visualize their community as a circle, and their vision of living in ""the circle of mountians,"" rather than in a valley, reflects their perspective on the society in which they live. The first half of the book incorporates material on history, ecology and economy, and delves deeply into the domestic organization, kinship, and neighborliness of this Basque community. In the second half of the book, the author introduces the males' customary roles as shepherds and cheesemakers. Following a detailed commentary on these vocations, Ott suggests that these seemingly prosaic activities represent the male attempt at symbolic fulfillment of the female procreative and nurturing roles. In a new afterword, Ott discusses developments that have impacted life in the pastoral community of Sainte-Engrâce since the original publication of the book—including the acquisition of telephones and the construction of roads to nearly every home. The Circle of Mountains will be of interest not only to social anthropologists but also to those concerned with the Basque language and culture and to scholars and students of ethnology, international studies, and political science.

Drawing on county records, newspaper microfilm, personal interviews, and on-site investigation, Hall provides the reader with a history of 175 significant sites, rendering a treasury of interesting facts on every page. This book blends history and old photographs with an update on the present condition of each ghost town or landmark. The sites and towns are arranged alphabetically, county by county, for quick reference.

Phyllis Barber grew up in Las Vegas, in the midst of a devout Mormon family. As a small child, she began to feel uneasy with her faith's all-pervasive certainty and righteousness. As she grew, the tensions between her religious beliefs and her desire for a larger, more cultured life also grew. She studied piano and dance, performed with a high school precision dance team, worked as an accompanist in a ballet studio and as a model. How I Got Cultured is a moving, candid, and sometimes hilarious account of an American adolescence, negotiated between the strictures of a demanding faith and the allures of one of the most flamboyant cities in the world.

Reno private investigator Jack Ross has been in the desert for six months when his respite is interrupted by television reporter Miranda Santee. She need's Jack help to solve a story. Miranda has an old photograph of two Las Vegas showgirls who allegedly robbed a mobster of one million dollars thirty years earlier. One of the women is dead, the other missing. Only one piece of the story can pull Ross out of the desert—the dead showgirl was his mother. Now, the man who always believed his mother’s death was an accident must find out if she was murdered.

Elko County, in the old heart of Nevada, is rich in historic sites, many of them hitherto uncharted and some verging on disappearing. For the first time, historian Shawn Hall identifies and locates the ghost towns and old mining camps of Elko County and recounts their colorful histories. Following a guidebook format, Hall divides the county into five easily accessible regions, then lists the historic sites within each region and provides directions to reach them. He offers a brief history of each site as well as a description of its extant structures and their present condition. The result is a lively compilation of local history and mining and ranching lore that records the dramatic past of Nevada’s northeast corner, its pioneers and prospectors, its towns and mines, its outlaws, ranchers, merchants, mining concerns, and civic leaders. The book offers never-before available information about the old heart of Nevada and the people who settled there. It will be of enduring value to tourists and weekend explorers, historic preservationists, and all those interested in the history and artifacts of this region.

An engaging, well-illustrated natural and cultural history of the oldest living organism—the bristlecone pine. Since Edmund Schulman discovered in 1958 that individual bristlecones live nearly 5,000 years, the trees have been investigated primarily for the elaborate record their rings contain. The trees have been ""read' closely, with major consequences for natural and human history. Historians have read local and global environmental change. Archaeologists have rewritten the history of civilization. Writers have transformed them into figures pertinent to the human dilemmas of time and eternity. A Garden of Bristlecones investigates professional and popular conceptions as a set of narratives drawn from the outside and inside of the trees. It reveals the premises of the investigators, the nature of their inquiry, and the extent of their knowledge, while also revealing the Great Basin bristlecone itself. Illustrations by Valerie Cohen.

Nevada’s Comstock Mining District has been the focus of legend since it first burst into international prominence in the late 1850s, and its principal settlement, Virginia City, endures in the popular mind as the West’s quintessential mining camp. But the authentic history of the Comstock is far more complex and interesting than its colorful image. Contrary to legend, Virginia City spent only its first few years as a ramshackle mining camp. The mining boom quickly turned it into a thriving urban center, at its peak one of the largest cities west of the Mississippi, replete with most of the amenities of any large city of its time.The lure of the area’s fabulous wealth attracted a remarkably heterogenous population from around the world and offered employment to dozens of trades and thousands of people, both men and women, representing every one of the region’s diverse ethnic groups.Ronald James’s brilliant account of the Comstock’s long and eventful history—the first comprehensive study of the subject in over a century—examines every aspect of the region and employs information gleaned from hundreds of written sources, interviews, archeological research, computer analysis, folklore, gender studies, physical geography, and architectural and art history, as well as over fifty rare photographs, many of them previously unpublished.

The indigo skies and lush vegetation of the contemporary West Coast belie the damaged souls and desperate alienation that lurk behind fading stucco walls and off the endless highways. The lives of women on the edge and beyond the margins have seldom been explored with as much power or insight as in these brilliant stories by award-winning novelist and poet Kate Braverman. In a world without succor, Braverman’s characters grope for meaning and solutions to their dilemmas. Our Lady of the 43 Sorrows must meet the bizarre needs of her severely brain-damaged mother as her own career as a soap-opera actress declines. The protagonist of ""Pagan Night"" waits with her unnamed and unwanted infant in a shabby zoo in Idaho while her partner buys dope and makes plans to reconstitute their failed rock band. And the precocious, awkward adolescent narrator of the title story watches as her elegant grandmother confronts the illness that will soon end the colorful life she has so enjoyed. Abandonment, in these wrenching stories, comes in many forms, and freedom is elusive and sometimes fraught with pain and terror. Braverman’s language is ripe, intense, as vivid as the sun-drenched California landscape, and her characters are contrary, unpredictable, and unforgettable. These haunting stories evoke the glittering expectations and shattering disappointments of the postmodern West.

In his poetry, writer and mountaineer C. L. Rawlins evokes the natural world and the American West in exciting detail. Philosophical, harsh, beautiful, gritty, in his poems Rawlins reveals himself to be a ""non-romantic Romantic.""A mountaineer and field hydrologist, he expertly approaches nature and the environment without sentimentality. In this second collection of his poetry, Rawlins speaks of many of the major issues of our time, in accessible yet wonderfully crafted poems. Rawlins treats the world of the human heart with wit and humor and great humanity.

Through the kindly but mysterious Basket Woman, cocky young glaciers, ancient Paiutes, and clever rabbits become the companions and teachers of Alan, the young son of homsteaders in early Nevada. The Basket Woman doesn't simply tell stories: She transports her young friend into powerful mythic tales where Alan learns the secret of the trees and animals and the wisdom of the people who flourisehd before the arrival of white settlers. A preface by Austin and a new introductgion by Austin scholar Mark Schlenz provide ample context for a multilevel appreciation of one of this remarkable writer's most important works.

The cause of three civil wars and almost endless civil strife, Carlism is one of the most significant forces in Spanish politics since the early-19th century, yet its remarkable evolution since the 1930s has gone undocumented. This study fills that gap, showing how the movement - a curious blend of populism and legitimism - shifted in the 1950s and 1960s from the extreme right to the moderate left, with its regal leaders declaring the need to establish a ""socialist monarchy"". By the early 1970s it had become an integral part of the avant-garde opposition to Franco, only to decline rapidly during the transition to democracy. Yet, as Jeremy MacClancy demonstrates, Carlism still manages to survive today, as both the Carlist political party and a living memory for today's Basques. An innovative mix of anthropology and history, this book is the first-ever study of Carlism to set the movement in both its national and local contexts, considering both the machinations of its urban elites and the attitudes of the rural supporters. Writing in a highly readable manner, MacClancy reveals the key roles of discourse, symbols and rituals within the life of Carlism and how they were used by different factions as the party shifted across the political spectrum. He also draws out the significant legacies of Carlism to contemporary Basque nationalism. Based on more than a decade's fieldwork in Navarra and research in a host of hitherto-unused archives, this work contributes to the understanding of both the modern Basque Country and modern Spain.

This memoir focuses on the now-vanished lifestyle of railroad hands and their families who lived along the Southern Pacific railroad tracks in the 1920s and 1930s

Leroy Upton, the ""straight white male"" who is the novel’s central character, has come a long way from the sun-baked working-class neighborhood in Bakersfield where he grew up. The son of an oil-field laborer, Leroy is now a professor at a small college in Northern California. He is happily married, has three much-loved children, and close friends who share his memories and success.

Blending natural history, politics, and allegory, Mary Austin champions local shepherds in the losing battle against the quickly developing tourist business in early twentieth-century California. The Flock is based on Mary Austin's first-hand experiences. She met many shepherds while visiting the Tejon ranches of Edward Beale and Henry Miller and cultivated relationships with men others often thought of as ignorant, unambitious, and dirty, listening closely to their stories. Her neighbors were scandalized, but Austin respected the shepherds' ways of thinking. In The Flock she captures their way of life, not as part of a romantic bygone era, but as exemplifying potentially radical ways of living in and thinking about the world. She blends natural history, politics, and allegory in a genre-blurring narrative championing local shepherds in their losing battle against the quickly developing tourist business in the Western Sierra. Barney Nelson, a rancher, hunter, and environmental activist, is widely recognized as one of the most original voices in environmental literature today. She has enhanced her new afterword with a selection of never-before-published drawings by Mary Austin that were the models for the lovely, authoritative engravings in the first edition, published in 1906. The Flock, readable, informative, and perennially fresh, should bring Austin's work to a broad new audience.

This work provides an introduction to Basque and Catalan nationalism. The two movements have much in common, but have differed in the strategies adopted to further their cause. Basque nationalism, in the shape of the military wing of ETA, took the path of violence, spawning an efficient terrorist campaign, while Catalan nationalism is more accommodating and peaceful. Conversi examines and compares the history, motives and methods of these two movements, considering the influence of such aspects of nationalist mobilization as: the choice of language, race and descent; the consequences of large-scale immigration; and the causes and effects of social violence.

Poetry that explores both the history of places and how language's living presence becomes an inhabitant of locales as well. Poet Elizabeth Dodd's world stretches from the lightless cave home of an eyeless, transparent fish known as a blindcat to the imagination of painter Georgia O'Keeffe. In this brilliantly crafted new collection, Dodd reveals her mastery of the medium-her closely observed images, compelling metaphors, and deep understanding and sympathy for the natural world, the rhythms of geologic time, and the seasons of the living year. Dodd possesses the rare gift that links the vagaries of the human experience with the mysterious truths of universal life, the vastness of the night sky with the equally vast potentials of the human heart. These are poems to be savored, treasured, and never forgotten.

Modern English is rich in words derived from sources as diverse as classical Latin and Greek, Indonesian and other Asian languages, European mythology and religion, and the popular culture of many times and places. In this survey of the origins of several hundred familiar English words, linguist Robert Gorrell explores the myriad ways our language has been shaped by successive conquests of Britain by the Romans, Germanic tribes, and Normans; by borrowings from Greek (which followed the spread of Christianity into the British Isles), Arabic, Native American languages, French, and others; and by the spread of British conquerors, colonists, and merchants around the world. Other words are derived from myths and legends, such as aphrodisiac from the Greek goddess Aphrodite and maudlin from medieval depictions of Mary Magdalene as a weeping, teary-eyed figure. Still other words originated in cultural practices, such as bootleg from the Prohibition practice of sellers carrying bottles of illegal liquor hidden in their high boots, or from the combination of older elements to meet new needs, such as helicopter from the Greek words helix (a spiral) and pterion (wing).

On January 27, 1951, the first atomic weapon was detonated over a section of desert known as Frenchman Flat in southern Nevada, providing dramatic evidence of the Nevada Test Site's beginnings. Fifty years later, author A. Costandina Titus reviews contemporary nuclear policy issues concerning the continued viability of that site for weapons testing. Titus has updated her now-classic study of atomic testing with fifteen years of political and cultural history-from the mid-1980s Reagan-Gorbachev nuclear standoff to the authorization of the Nevada Test Site Research Center, a Desert Research Institute facility scheduled to open in 2001. In the second edition of Bombs in the Backyard, Titus deftly covers the post-Cold War transformation of American atomic policy as well as our overarching cultural interest in all matters atomic, making this a must-read for anyone interested in atomic policy and politics.

An intimate Basque cookbook peppered with family stories and photos and jam-packed with delicious recipes. Mary Ancho Davis invites everyone to join her at her mother's table as she recalls her family's traditions and history and shares special memories from her mother Dominga's kitchen. From huge cream puffs filled with heavy cream skimmed from the top of raw milk, to recollections of ringing the large iron triangle hanging from a tree branch outside the kitchen door, in Chorizos in an Iron Skillet Ancho Davis offers wonderful details about life and meals on her family's Basque ranch. When Ancho Davis's mother emigrated to the United States from Vizcaya, Spain, she brought many traditional Basque family recipes. Soon after arriving in the vast western land of Nevada, she realized that her ancestors' culinary traditions would need to be altered and adapted in her new home. No longer were standard ingredients readily available, as they had been in the Old Country. Dominga also learned to adjust favorite recipes to accommodate the tastes of friends, neighbors, and ranch hands not familiar with Basque flavors. In this charming cookbook, Mary Ancho Davis traces a clear path from Old Country traditional dishes to their modern versions as she shares her family's recipes and details the evolution of Basque cooking in America. A personal cookbook from one Basque family, Chorizos in an Iron Skillet is also an engaging cultural study of culinary traditions that spans several generations of Basque immigration to the American West. With recipes for everything from Chicken with Chocolate and Dominga's Basque Chorizos to Dried Apricot Pie, these Basque ranch dishes offer a multitude of delicious ideas for down-home cooking. Illustrated with photographs from the Ancho family, plus helpful advice on ingredients and cooking techniques, Chorizos in an Iron Skillet is the perfect kitchen companion for filling your home with the flavors and aromas of Basque cooking.

Wallace Stegner is one of the finest American writers, teachers and environmentalists of the 20th century. While his writing, both fiction and non-fiction, was recognized by a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, and many other distinctions major and minor, his legacy is much larger than any of these would suggest. In these in-depth essays, Stegner's biographer continues to explore various aspects of his career - his philosophical writing, his concern for the land, and his bedrock beliefs.

The complex relationships between human identity and place have been studied by scholars from many disciplines. In Geographical Identities of Ethnic America, eighteen distinguished geographers examine the ways in which place fashions, recreates, and contextualizes human identity in North America. Seldom has the richness of the continent's ethnic diversity been examined with such insight or sensitivity, nor have the multifarious and constantly evolving connections between places and their human occupants been studied so successfully. For scholars and students seeking fresh insights into the social, cultural, and economic aspects of North America's diverse immigrant and indigenous heritages, Geographical Identities of Ethnic America is essential reading.

During the past two decades, literary issues such as multiculturalism, gender, borders and border crossing, and the development of personal, cultural, and alternative identities have become increasingly important. The same years have seen the flourishing of writers from a number of ethnic minorities, including the Mexican-American women who are the subjects of these probing and insightful interviews by Karin Rosa Ikas. The interviews, which address such topics as personal background, education, sense of ethnic and gender identity, the origins and intention of published works, and general views on writing, culture, and art, reveal a rich multiplicity of Chicana voices and views. The writers come from Texas, New Mexico, and California; their connections to Mexico are as direct as having been born there and as tenuous as having descended from a family resident in New Mexico for more than four centuries. Their backgrounds reflect a wide range of socioeconomic realities, and their views on gender, sexuality, race, and writing are equally diverse. Yet to each of these writers, her identity as a Chicana and as a woman is critically important to her evolution and purpose as a writer. Chicana Ways will be essential reading for anyone interested in multicultural and feminist literature and will serve as compelling documentation of the rich diversity and brilliance of contemporary Mexican-American writing.