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Sawbill: A Search for Place
by Jennifer CaseIn Sawbill Jennifer Case watches her family suddenly exchange their rooted existence for a series of relocations that take them across the United States. In response Case struggles to &“live in place&” without a geographical home, a struggle that leads her to search for grounding in the now-dismantled fishing resort her grandparents ran in northeastern Minnesota. By chronicling her migratory adulthood alongside the similarly unpredictable history of Sawbill Lodge, this memoir offers a resonant meditation on home, family, environment, and the human desire for place in the inherently mobile twenty-first century.
Thelma & Louise (Reel West Series)
by Susan KollinThelma & Louise, the 1991 film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis, has been described as a road movie, a buddy movie, a feminist parable, and only incidentally as a Western. An Oscar winner for first-time screenwriter Callie Khouri, Thelma & Louise catalyzed a national conversation about women, violence, and self-determination in a Hollywood still shrugging off the West of John Wayne and in an America that still viewed women as accessories to the national mythology.In this latest volume in the Reel West Series series, Susan Kollin recreates this watershed moment for women&’s movies in general and women&’s Westerns in particular.
The Hero Twins: A Navajo-English Story of the Monster Slayers
by Jim KristoficThe Hero Twins tells the story of two brothers born to Changing Woman and trained by the Holy People to save their people from the naayéé&’, a race of monsters. But the naayéé&’ can&’t be beaten alone. Family and friends and wise mentors must lead any warrior down the good path toward victory. Colorful illustrations show the action as the twins seek out their father to receive the weapons they need to face the greatest monster of them all: Yé&’iitsoh.Told in Navajo, the Diné language, and English, this story exists in many versions, and all demonstrate the importance of thinking, patience, persistence, bravery, and reverence. These teachings still help the Diné—and everyone—find the harmony of a balanced and braver life.
The Big Range
by Jack SchaeferSchaefer shares the individual stories of seven people—rancher, sheepherder, homesteader, town settler, soldier, miner, and cowboy—in this collection. He tells the tales as they can only be told: in the open spaces of the Old West. In these memorable narratives Schaefer depicts the unique conflicts of settler life and captures the spirit of the resolute, willful, determined, and broken characters found on the Western frontier.
Crossing Borders with the Santo Niño de Atocha
by Juan Javier PescadorCrossing Borders with the Santo Niño de Atocha journeys through the genesis, development, and various metamorphoses in the veneration of the Holy Child of Atocha, from its origins in Zacatecas in the late colonial period through its different transformations over the centuries, across lands and borders, and to the ultimate rising as a defining religious devotion for the Mexican/Chicano experience in the United States.It is a vivid account of the historical origins of the Santo Niño de Atocha and His transformations Everywhere He ever walked, first in the nineteenth century, along the Camino de Tierra Adentro between Zacatecas and New Mexico, to His consolidation as a saint for the Borderlands, and finally, to His contemporary metamorphosis as a border-crossing religious symbol for the immigrant experience and the Mexican/Chicano communities in the United States.Using a wide variety of visual and written materials from archives in Spain, Mexico, and the United States, along with oral history interviews, participant observation, photography, popular art, thanksgiving paintings, and private letters addressed to the Holy Child, Juan Javier Pescador presents the fascinating and intimate history of this religious symbol native to the Borderlands, while dispelling some myths and inaccurate references. Including narrative vignettes with his own personal experiences and fragments of his family's interactions with the Holy Child of Atocha, Pescador presents the book as a thanksgiving testimony of the prominent position the Santo Niño de Atocha has enjoyed in the altarcitos of my family and the dear place He has carved in the hearts of my ancestors.Visit the author's website at www.pescadorarte.com to learn more and to see images of the Santo Niño de Atocha included in the book.
Golden States of Grace: Prayers of the Disinherited
by Rick NahmiasTaking California as a window into the diversity of religion in America, Golden States of Grace documents marginalized communities at prayer in their own faith traditions. The collection is thoroughly interfaith, introducing us to the nation's only halfway house for addicts self-identified as Jewish, a transsexual gospel choir, a Buddhist community in San Quentin, a Mormon congregation organized by the deaf for the deaf, Latina sex workers worshipping the female folk deity Santísima Muerte, and more. Depictions of conventional middle-class religion are widely visible in the media, but the American public rarely sees the sacred worlds of society's marginalized: the outcasts, the fallen, those that have been labeled "other" - ironically, those whom religion aims to serve. The poignant stories Nahmias has gathered here cross numerous boundaries and ask difficult questions few outsiders have been willing to pose.
Tracking the Chupacabra: The Vampire Beast in Fact, Fiction, and Folklore
by Benjamin RadfordAmong the monsters said to roam the world&’s jungles and desolate deserts, none is more feared than the chupacabra—-the blood-sucking beast blamed for the mysterious deaths of thousands of animals since the 1990s. To some it is a joke; to many it is a very real threat and even a harbinger of the apocalypse. Originating in Latin America yet known worldwide, the chupacabra is a contradictory and bizarre blend of vampire and shapeshifter, changing its appearance and characteristics depending on when and where it is seen. Rooted in conspiracy theory and anti-American sentiment, the beast is said to be the result of Frankenstein-like secret U.S. government experiments in the Puerto Rican jungles.Combining five years of careful investigation (including information from eyewitness accounts, field research, and forensic analysis) with a close study of the creature&’s cultural and folkloric significance, Radford&’s book is the first to fully explore and try to solve the decades-old mystery of the chupacabra.
The Secret War in El Paso: Mexican Revolutionary Intrigue, 1906-1920
by Louis R. Sadler Charles H. HarrisWinner of the 2010 Spur Award for Best Contemporary Nonfiction from Western Writers of AmericaThe Mexican Revolution could not have succeeded without the use of American territory as a secret base of operations, a source of munitions, money, and volunteers, a refuge for personnel, an arena for propaganda, and a market for revolutionary loot. El Paso, the largest and most important American city on the Mexican border during this time, was the scene of many clandestine operations as American businesses and the U.S. federal government sought to maintain their influences in Mexico and protect national interest while keeping an eye on key Revolutionary figures. In addition, the city served as refuge to a cast of characters that included revolutionists, adventurers, smugglers, gunrunners, counterfeiters, propagandists, secret agents, double agents, criminals, and confidence men. Using 80,000 pages of previously classified FBI documents on the Mexican Revolution and hundreds of Mexican secret agent reports from El Paso and Ciudad Juarez in the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Relations archive, Charles Harris and Louis Sadler examine the mechanics of rebellion in a town where factional loyalty was fragile and treachery was elevated to an art form. As a case study, this slice of El Paso's, and America's, history adds new dimensions to what is known about the Mexican Revolution.
Royal Coachman: Adventures in the Fly Fisher's World
by Paul SchulleryIn Royal Coachman Paul Schullery is at once erudite emissary of the angle and consummate trout bum. And because not everyone can be both, we praise him as an American original.--James Prosek, author of Trout: An Illustrated History and The Complete AnglerFew have as much passion for fly-fishing as Paul Schullery, and even fewer have his endless curiosity about the history of the sport, but it is his awesome talent as a writer that makes Royal Coachman such fine and fun reading. He makes his passion, and his knowledge, so compelling that they become yours as much as his.--Gary LaFontaine, author of The Dry Fly: New AnglesThe title derives from one of the most popular and versatile flies available, and the book delivers some meticulous history on the subject of fly patterns and their creators. . . . He gets at the culture, the mechanics and the evolution of the sport in an engaging and informative way. He also undertakes the question . . . of whether or not casting a dry fly can truly be called an art with a capital 'A.' He is to be congratulated for doing so without the usual he-man bombast or Zen-master voodoo so often found in rod and gun writing.--The New York Times
Try to Get Lost: Essays on Travel and Place (River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize Series)
by Joan FrankThrough the author&’s travels in Europe and the United States, Try to Get Lost explores the quest for place that compels and defines us: the things we carry, how politics infuse geography, media&’s depictions of an idea of home, the ancient and modern reverberations of the word &“hotel,&” and the ceaseless discovery generated by encounters with self and others on familiar and foreign ground. Frank posits that in fact time itself may be our ultimate, inhabited place—the &“vastest real estate we know,&” with a &“stunningly short&” lease.
The Writings of Eusebio Chacón (Pasó Por Aquí Series on the Nuevomexicano Literary Heritage)
by A. Gabriel Meléndez and Francisco A. LomelíEusebio Chacón, born in Peñasco, New Mexico, is arguably one of the most significant and most overlooked figures in New Mexico's cultural heritage. He earned a law degree from Notre Dame and returned to practice law in Trinidad, Colorado. He served as a district attorney for Las Animas County, Colorado, and as a translator for the U.S. Court of Private Land Claims. In 1898, he began to write and edit for El Progreso, in which many of his articles exposed the unjust treatment of Hispanics in Colorado and New Mexico. He was also New Mexico's first novelist, and took pride in his pioneering efforts to establish a Nuevomexicano literary tradition. This collection of Chacón's writings brings together all published and written materials found, displaying his versatility with samples of his work as an accomplished orator, translator, essayist, historian, novelist, and poet.
With a Book in Their Hands: Chicano/a Readers and Readerships across the Centuries
by Manuel M. Martín-RodríguezFirst Place Winner of the 2015 International Latino Book Award for Best Latino Focused Nonfiction Book Literary history is a history of reading. What happens during the act of reading is the subject of the branch of literary scholarship known as reader-response theory. Does the text guide the reader? Does the reader operate independently of the text? Questions like these shape the approach of the essays in this book, edited by a scholar known for his groundbreaking work in using reader-response theory as a window into Chicana and Chicano literature. Manuel M. Martín-Rodríguez has overseen several research projects aimed at documenting Chicana and Chicano reading practices and experiences. Here he gathers diverse and passionate accounts of reading drawn from that research. For many, books served as refuges from the sorrows of a childhood marked by violence or parental abandonment. Several of the contributors here salute the roles of teachers in introducing poetry and stories into their lives.
Rethinking Mexican Indigenismo: The INI's Coordinating Center in Highland Chiapas and the Fate of a Utopian Project
by Stephen E. LewisMexico&’s National Indigenist Institute (INI) was at the vanguard of hemispheric indigenismo from 1951 through the mid-1970s, thanks to the innovative development projects that were first introduced at its pilot Tseltal-Tsotsil Coordinating Center in highland Chiapas. This book traces how indigenista innovation gave way to stagnation as local opposition, shifting national priorities, and waning financial support took their toll. After 1970 indigenismo may have served the populist aims of president Luis Echeverría, but Mexican anthropologists, indigenistas, and the indigenous themselves increasingly challenged INI theory and practice and rendered them obsolete.
Hard to Have Heroes
by Buddy MaysWhen fourteen-year-old wannabe cowboy Noah Odell and his widowed mother leave rainy Gold Hill, Oregon, to join Noah&’s flamboyant uncle Bud on a ranch in New Mexico, they find themselves in the middle of nowhere with daily temperatures in excess of 100 degrees; enough rattlesnakes, buzzards, and hungry coyotes to start a zoo; a dozen scrawny steers; and a smelly outdoor toilet overrun with black widow spiders.When Bud presents Noah with a cantankerous mule named Brimstone, the adventures begin. Accompanied by his new best friends—an unlikely cowboy philosopher named Marvin Couch and a precocious tomboy prodigy named LaDonna Hawthorne—Noah and his mule encounter some of the Chihuahuan Desert&’s strangest characters. Green space monsters, eccentric Apache college professors, jackalopes, royal Spanish ghosts, and an inept gang of local bullies assure that the days are never dull, especially when the U.S. Army lawyers and MPs try to confiscate Bud&’s ranch to expand a top-secret rocket-testing facility at nearby White Sands Proving Ground.
That Winning Feeling!
by Jane SavoieJane Savoie presents a revolutionary approach to riding by which you can train your mind and shape your attitudes to achieve higher levels of skill than every imaged.The book deals with such concepts asluckworrydreams&“loser&’s limp&”commitmentcriticismfrustrationinspirationYou will learn relaxation exercises that will not only rid you of stress and tension, but will also enable you to benefit fully from the use of &“imaging&” as a working tool to achieve desired ends. And you will skillfully invoke the &“As Ifprinciple&” to think and behave &“as if&” you are already experiencing your wants and needs.The author explains how words, and word-images, play a major role in determining your actions. For example, if you say &“challenge&” instead of &“problem,&” you will positively enhance your performance.The &“training&” chapters take all the general principles and apply them to specific riding situations. The final chapters deal with &“competition,&” focusing all the tools and techniques learned earlier on actual performance scenarios.Throughout the informative and spirited text, there are scores of personal anecdotes about some of America&’s leading riders—and their affinity with the ideas and teaching of the author.
The Art of Brevity: Crafting the Very Short Story
by Grant FaulknerWith increased compression, every word, every sentence matters more. A writer must learn how to form narratives around caesuras and crevices instead of strings of connections, to move a story through the symbolic weight of images, to master the power of suggestion.With elegant prose, deep readings of other writers, and scaffolded writing exercises, The Art of Brevity takes the reader on a lyrical exploration of compact storytelling, guiding readers to heighten their awareness of not only what appears on the page but also what doesn&’t.
Citizen Carl: The Editor Who Cracked Teapot Dome, Shot a Judge, and Invented the Parking Meter
by Jack McElroyEducator, lawyer, editor, inventor, entrepreneur, and civic booster, Carl Magee helped shape New Mexico and Oklahoma in the years after gaining statehood, garnering fame along the way. Jack McElroy's fascinating biography of Citizen Carl tells the story of a man whose exploits were as diverse and complex as the American Southwest he loved.Magee purchased the Albuquerque Journal from the syndicate responsible for reelecting Senator Albert Bacon Fall, soon to become secretary of the Interior. Magee battled the Republican machine in New Mexico, a fight that sent Fall to prison in the Teapot Dome scandal and saw Magee repeatedly tried on charges of criminal libel, contempt of court, and even manslaughter. Forced to sell the Journal, he then started the newspaper that would become the Albuquerque Tribune.Magee's fame prompted Scripps-Howard to buy the Tribune, retaining him as editor and adopting his motto: Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way. The company later transferred Magee to its struggling paper in Oklahoma City. There he solved the city's downtown parking problem by inventing the parking meter.Now mostly forgotten, Magee's legacy lives on, and many of the issues he confronted--press freedom, gun violence, public corruption, and demagoguery--remain relevant today.
The Believer: Alien Encounters, Hard Science, and the Passion of John Mack
by Ralph BlumenthalThe Believer is the weird and chilling true story of Dr. John Mack. This eminent Harvard psychiatrist and Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer risked his career to investigate the phenomenon of human encounters with aliens and to give credibility to the stupefying tales shared by people who were utterly convinced they had happened.Nothing in Mack&’s four decades of psychiatry had prepared him for the otherworldly accounts of a cross section of humanity including young children who reported being taken against their wills by alien beings. Over the course of his career his interest in alien abduction grew from curiosity to wonder, ultimately developing into a limitless, unwavering passion.Based on exclusive access to Mack&’s archives, journals, and psychiatric notes and interviews with his family and closest associates, The Believer reveals the life and work of a man who explored the deepest of scientific conundrums and further leads us to the hidden dimensions and alternate realities that captivated Mack until the end of his life.
Headed into the Wind: A Memoir
by Jack LoefflerWith the temperament of Santa Claus and the tenacity of a badger, Jack Loeffler reveals his compassion and concern for Southwestern traditional cultures and their respective habitats in the wake of Manifest Destiny. Working both as an individual and with comrades—including Edward Abbey and Gary Snyder—he was part of an early coterie of counterculturalists and environmentalists who fought to thwart the plunder of natural resources in the Southwest. Loeffler, a former jazz musician, fire lookout, museum curator, bioregionalist, and self-taught aural historian, shares his humor and imagination, his adventures, observations, reflections, and meditations along the trail in his retelling of a life well lived. In this honest memoir, he advises each and every one of us to go skinny-dipping joyfully in the flow of Nature to better understand where we&’re headed.
Spooky Archaeology: Myth and the Science of the Past
by Jeb J. CardOutside of scientific journals, archaeologists are depicted as searching for lost cities and mystical artifacts in news reports, television, video games, and movies like Indiana Jones or The Mummy. This fantastical image has little to do with day-to-day science, yet it is deeply connected to why people are fascinated by the ancient past. By exploring the development of archaeology, this book helps us understand what archaeology is and why it matters.In Spooky Archaeology author Jeb J. Card follows a trail of clues left by adventurers and professional archaeologists that guides the reader through haunted museums, mysterious hieroglyphic inscriptions, fragments of a lost continent that never existed, and deep into an investigation of magic and murder. Card unveils how and why archaeology continues to mystify and why there is an ongoing fascination with exotic artifacts and eerie practices.
The Rock Cycle: Essays (River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize Series)
by Kevin HonoldThe past is a living thing, palpable as the weather. In this collection of essays, Kevin Honold explores themes of history and its fading significance in modern American life. &“Remembrance is morbid, unprofitable,&” he writes. &“It&’s impractical, impolite in certain company.&” These words remind us that maintaining a sense of the historical past is crucial to maintaining one&’s humanity in the face of our often dehumanizing political and economic systems. The Rock Cycle delves into memory and into the spaces of history, especially the deserts of the American Southwest. This landscape provides a stage, stripped of all distraction, where a person comes face to face with themselves. With contemplations on religions, philosophies, works of literature, and the land, Honold examines what it means to be oneself within the world.
Dressage in Harmony
by Walter ZettlWhile teaching lessons and clinics across North America in the late 1990s, Walter Zettl was struck by the hunger for knowledge of classical training principles, which was challenged by both the vastness of the geographic range and the lack of any organized system for delivering correct information. This book was written to meet what he identified then as a need: to serve as both a complete treatise and handy reference. Clear and easy-to-understand chapters take you through each training stage, discuss problems that commonly occur, and provide competent, sensible corrections with the good of the horse in mind.
Josey Wales: Two Westerns : Gone to Texas; The Vengeance Trail of Josey Wales
by Forrest CarterJosey Wales was the most wanted man in Texas. His wife and child had been lost to pre-civil War destruction and, like Jesse James and other young farmers, he joined the guerrilla soldiers of Missouri--men with no cause but survival and no purpose but revenge. Josey Wales and his Cherokee friend, Lone Watie, set out for the West through the dangerous Camanchero territory. Hiding by day, traveling by night, they are joined by an Indian woman named Little Moonlight, and rescue an old woman and her granddaughter from their besieged wagon. The five of them travel toward Texas and win through brash and honest violence, a chance for a new way of life.
The Lynching of Mexicans in the Texas Borderlands
by Nicholas Villanueva Jr.More than just a civil war, the Mexican Revolution in 1910 triggered hostilities along the border between Mexico and the United States. In particular, the decade following the revolution saw a dramatic rise in the lynching of ethnic Mexicans in Texas. This book argues that ethnic and racial tension brought on by the fighting in the borderland made Anglo-Texans feel justified in their violent actions against Mexicans. They were able to use the legal system to their advantage, and their actions often went unpunished. Villanueva&’s work further differentiates the borderland lynching of ethnic Mexicans from the Southern lynching of African Americans by asserting that the former was about citizenship and sovereignty, as many victims&’ families had resources to investigate the crimes and thereby place the incidents on an international stage.
Modern Eventing with Phillip Dutton
by Phillip DuttonThis fabulously illustrated book covers training, conditioning, and competing in all three phases of events: dressage, cross-country, and show jumping. In addition, Dutton includes full chapters describing the special needs of the event horse, with tips and advice from the top experts who make up his internationally respected eventing team—his groom, his farrier, and his veterinarian. You'll find guidance in everything from daily maintenance to braiding and turnout, and from hoof care and studs to common health issues and vet box care of your horse during competitions.With tips for finding the right event prospect, whatever your level of experience, as well as Dutton's own schooling exercises, both on the flat and over fences, the book promises to give you the leg up you need for a safe and confident start in the sport.Everything You Need to Excel in Eventing including:Tack & EquipmentFinding the Right HorsePutting Together an Eventing TeamHorse & Rider FitnessBasic Dressage SchoolingCross-Country: No FencesCross-Country JumpingIntroduction to Show JumpingMental Preparation for Horse & RiderWarming Up for Each PhaseRiding the Dressage TestWalking the Cross-Country CoursePlanning the Show Jumping RoundStaying Clear and Making TimeGrooming, Braiding, & Quarter MarksFeeding the Working AthleteHoof Maintenance, Shoes, & StudsCommon Health ProblemsCare of the Event Horse During CompetitionAnd So Much More!Includes 11 of Phillip's Personal Jumping Exercises!