Search results for ""University of Nebraska Press""

In May 1804, Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and their Corps of Discovery set out on a journey of a lifetime to explore and interpret the American West. The Lewis and Clark Expedition Day by Day follows this exploration with a daily narrative of their journey, from its starting point in Illinois in 1804 to its successful return to St. Louis in September 1806.

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The Southpaw is a story about coming of age in America by way of the baseball diamond. Lefthander Henry Wiggen, six feet three, a hundred ninety-five pounds, and the greatest pitcher going, grows to manhood in a right-handed world. From his small-town beginnings to the top of the game, Henry finds out how hard it is to please his coach, his girl, and the sports page—and himself, too—all at once. Written in Henry’s own words, this exuberant, funny novel follows his eccentric course from bush league to the World Series. Although Mark Harris loves and writes tellingly about the pleasures of baseball, his primary subject has always been the human condition and the shifts of mortal men and women as they try to understand and survive what life has dealt them. This new Bison Books edition celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The Southpaw. In his introduction to this edition, Mark Harris discusses the genesis of the novel in his own life experience. Also available in Bison Books editions are The Southpaw, It Looked Like For Ever, and A Ticket for a Seamstitch, the other three volumes in the Henry Wiggen series.

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Coyote is easily the most popular character in the stories of Indian tribes from Canada to Mexico. This volume contains seventeen coyote tales collected and translated by Father Berard Haile, O.F.M., more than half a century ago. The original Navajo transcriptions are included, along with notes. The tales show Coyote as a warrior, a shaman, a trickster; a lecher, a thief; a sacrificial victim, and always as the indomitable force of life. He is the paradoxical hero and scamp whose adventures inspire laughter or awe, depending upon what shape he takes in a given story. In his introduction to Navajo Coyote Tales, Karl W. Luckert considers Coyote mythology in a theoretical and historical framework.

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A 2017 Choice Outstanding Academic TitleIntersectionality intervenes in the field of intersectionality studies: the integrative examination of the effects of racial, gendered, and class power on people’s lives. While “intersectionality” tends to circulate merely as a buzzword, Anna Carastathis joins other critical voices in urging a more careful reading. Challenging the narratives of arrival that surround it, Carastathis argues that intersectionality is a horizon, illuminating ways of thinking that have yet to be realized; consequently, calls to “go beyond” intersectionality are premature. A provisional interpretation of intersectionality can disorient habits of essentialism, categorical purity, and prototypicality and overcome dynamics of segregation and subordination in political movements. Through a close reading of critical race theorist Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw’s germinal texts, published more than twenty-five years ago, Carastathis urges analytic clarity, contextual rigor, and a politicized, historicized understanding of this pervasive concept. Intersectionality’s roots in social justice movements and critical intellectual projects—specifically black feminism—must be retraced and synthesized with a decolonial analysis so that its potential to actualize coalitions can be enacted.

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Narratives are everywhere—and since a significant part of contemporary media culture is defined by narrative forms, media studies need a genuinely transmedial narratology. Against this background, Transmedial Narratology and Contemporary Media Culture focuses on the intersubjective construction of storyworlds as well as on prototypical forms of narratorial and subjective representation. This book provides not only a method for the analysis of salient transmedial strategies of narrative representation in contemporary films, comics, and video games but also a theoretical frame within which medium-specific approaches from literary and film narratology, from comics studies and game studies, and from various other strands of media and cultural studies may be applied to further our understanding of narratives across media.

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"Hafen has done a great service to the study of American Indian literature by collecting in one book several published and unpublished pieces. . . . A wonderful and enlightening collection."—ChoiceZitkala-Ša (Red Bird) (1876–1938), also known as Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, was one of the best-known and most influential Native Americans of the twentieth century. Born on the Yankton Sioux Reservation, she remained true to her indigenous heritage as a student at the Boston Conservatory and a teacher at the Carlisle Indian School, as an activist in turn attacking the Carlisle School, as an artist celebrating Native stories and myths, and as an active member of the Society of American Indians in Washington DC. All these currents of Zitkala-Ša’s rich life come together in this book, which presents her previously unpublished stories, rare poems, and the libretto of The Sun Dance Opera.

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Irregular Connections traces the anthropological study of sex from the eighteenth century to the present, focusing primarily on social and cultural anthropology and the work done by researchers in North America and Great Britain. Andrew P. and Harriet D. Lyons argue that the sexuality of those whom anthropologists studied has been conscripted into Western discourses about sex, including debates about prostitution, homosexuality, divorce, premarital relations, and hierarchies of gender, class, and race. Because sex is the most private of activities and often carries a high emotional charge, it is peculiarly difficult to investigate. At times, such as the late 1920s and the last decade of the twentieth century, sexuality has been a central concern of anthropologists and focal in their theoretical formulations. At other times the study of sexuality has been marginalized. The anthropology of sex has sometimes been one of the main faces that anthropology presented to the public, often causing resentment within the discipline. Irregular Connections discusses several individuals who have played a significant role in the anthropological study of sexuality, including Sir Richard Burton, Havelock Ellis, Edward Westermarck, Bronislaw Malinowski, Margaret Mead, George Devereux, Robert Levy, Gilbert Herdt, Stephen O. Murray, and Esther Newton. Synthesizing a wealth of information from different anthropological traditions, the authors offer a seamless history of the anthropology of sex as it has been practiced and conceptualized in North America and Great Britain.

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The Earp Brothers of Tombstone and the famous fight at the O. K. Corral are well known to American history and even better known to American legend. This composite biography of Wyatt, Morgan, Virgil, James, and Warner Earp is based on the recollections of Mrs. Virgil Earp, dictated to the author in the 1930s, and amplified by documents he unearthed in 1959. In his review of the book for Library Journal, W. S. Wallace stated that he considered The Earp Brothers of Tombstone "the most authoritative account ever to be published on the subject."

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Mrs. Millwood is beautiful, intelligent, and ambitious, but London gives her no means of support except to seduce men. Love for her leads eighteen-year-old Barnwell to deceit, theft, and murder."What are your laws," Mrs. Millwood asks, "but the fool’s wisdom and the coward’s valor, the instrument and screen of all your villainies by which you punish in others what you act out yourselves, had you been in their circumstances? The judge who condemns the poor man for being a thief had been a thief himself, had he been poor. Thus you go on deceiving and being deceived, harassing, plaguing, and destroying one another, but women are your universal prey."First performed in 1731, The London Merchant became on of the most popular plays of the century. A chronicler of the age, Theophilus Cibber called it "almost a new species of tragedy."

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"Hafen has done a great service to the study of American Indian literature by collecting in one book several published and unpublished pieces. . . . A wonderful and enlightening collection."—ChoiceDawnland Voices calls attention to the little-known but extraordinarily rich literary traditions of New England’s Native Americans. This pathbreaking anthology includes both classic and contemporary literary works from ten New England indigenous nations: the Abenaki, Maliseet, Mi’kmaq, Mohegan, Narragansett, Nipmuc, Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, Schaghticoke, and Wampanoag.Through literary collaboration and recovery, Siobhan Senier and Native tribal historians and scholars have crafted a unique volume covering a variety of genres and historical periods. From the earliest petroglyphs and petitions to contemporary stories and hip-hop poetry, this volume highlights the diversity and strength of New England Native literary traditions. Dawnland Voices introduces readers to the compelling and unique literary heritage in New England, banishing the misconception that “real” Indians and their traditions vanished from that region centuries ago.

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The Athletic Crusade is the first book to systematically analyze the role of sports in the expansion of U.S. empire from the 1890s through World War II. Gerald R. Gems details how white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant males set the standard for inclusion within American society, transferred that standard to foreign territories, and subtly used American sports to instill allegedly desirable racial, moral, and commercial virtues in colonial subjects. In the realm of such expansion, sports provided a less harsh, less militaristic means of instilling belief in a dominant system’s values and principles than more overt methods such as war.The process of change, however, had unexpected consequences as subordinate groups adapted or even rejected American overtures. Sport became a means for nonwhites to challenge whiteness, Social Darwinism, and cultural hegemony by establishing their own physical prowess, claiming a measure of esteem, and creating a greater sense of national identity. Gems shows the direct influence of sports in Hawaii, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic and explores their comparatively minimal influence in countries such as China and Japan.Amid increasing globalization, The Athletic Crusade offers a welcome perspective on how the United States has attempted to spread its influence in the past and the implications for the future of indigenous and other societies.

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From the same corral that produced the widely loved Horse Tradin’, Ben K. Green has rounded up fifteen new yarns filled with the ornery yet irresistible style that has earned his books a place in classic Western Americana.Some More Horse Tradin’ recounts the dealings of a whole slew of craggy old-timers and rangy characters. See them match wits as they trade well-bred mares, snorty-like range colts, and used-to-be-bad horses from the tumbleweed plains. Admire the old-time knavery, skill, and salesmanship in such tales as “Gittin’ Even,” “Brethren Horse Traders,” “Mule Schoolin’,” and “Water Treatment and the Sore-Tailed Bronc.” Ride along with Green, and he’ll tell you what he knows about horseflesh--but keep your wits about you, and hang on to your wallet.

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2023 Hagley Prize for Best Book in Business HistoryBuying into Change examines how the development of a mass consumer society under the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco (1939–1975) inserted Spain into transnational consumer networks and set the stage for Spain’s transition to democracy during the late 1970s. This transition is broadly significant to both a Spanish public still struggling to redefine their society after Franco and to scholars who have long debated the origins of Spain’s current democracy, yet many aspects of it remain largely unexamined.Buying into Change incorporates mass consumption into our understanding of Spain’s democratic transition by tracing the spread and social impact of new foreign-influenced department stores, of imported innovations such as modern mass advertising, and of consumer magazines that promoted foreign products. Initially, these enterprises backed Franco’s conservative policies, and the regime in turn encouraged consumption in order to improve its image both domestically and abroad. Spain’s new globally oriented commerce ultimately sold retailers and shoppers not just foreign ways of buying and selling but also subversive ideas. Imported 1960s fashions brought along countercultural notions on issues such as gender equality. And as Spaniards consumed more like their foreign neighbors, they increasingly viewed themselves as cosmopolitan and European and identified with liberal political conditions abroad, undermining Francoism’s doctrine of national exceptionalism, thus laying the social foundations for democratization and European integration in Franco’s wake.

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Many recent books have documented the collaboration of the French authorities with the anti-Jewish German policies of World War II. Yet about 76 percent of France’s Jews survived—more than in almost any other country in Western Europe. How do we explain this phenomenon? Certainly not by looking at official French policy, for the Vichy government began preparing racial laws even before the German occupiers had decreed such laws. To provide a full answer to the question of how so many French Jews survived, Susan Zuccotti examines the response of the French people to the Holocaust. Drawing on memoirs, government documents, and personal interviews with survivors, she tells the stories of ordinary and extraordinary French men and women. Zuccotti argues that the French reaction to the Holocaust was not as reprehensible as it has been portrayed.

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In 1862 the largest Indian uprising in American history occurred in southern Minnesota. Enraged Sioux attempted to throw off the broken treaties that still bound them and to avenge the insults and depredations they had been forced to bear. Hundreds of whites were killed. Women were taken captive.Told from the point of view of Judith Raveling, a young woman widowed by the uprising, Scarlet Plume draws on the brutal history of the conflict from beginning to end. Taken captive by the Sioux, Judith is given to Scarlet Plume, one of the many warriors who know their cause is lost. Caught between the men who would wage war ruthlessly and his own judgment, which tells him how dearly the Sioux will pay for every white person killed, Scarlet Plume tries to save as many as he can. Defying the dangers of a pitiless war, he returns Judith to the safety of her people. Soon she must try to save him. Scarlet Plume is the third of Frederick Manfred’s five-volume series, The Buckskin Man Tales.

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The Complete Letters of Henry James fills a crucial gap in modern literary studies by presenting in a scholarly edition the complete letters of one of the great novelists and letter writers of the English language. Comprising more than ten thousand letters reflecting on a remarkably wide range of topics—from James’s own life and literary projects to broader questions on art, literature, and criticism—this edition is an indispensable resource for students of James and of American and English literature, culture, and criticism. It will also be essential for research libraries throughout North America and Europe and for scholars who specialize in James, the European novel, and modern literature. Pierre A. Walker and Greg W. Zacharias have conceived this edition according to the exacting standards of the Committee on Scholarly Editions. The first in the series, this two-volume work includes the letters from 1854 to 1869 in volume one and the letters from 1869 to 1872 in volume two.

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On October 8, 1908, Mordecai Brown clutched a half-dozen notes inside his coat pocket. The message of each was clear: we’ll kill you if you pitch and beat the Giants. A black handprint marked each note, the signature of the Italian Mafia.Mordecai Brown—dubbed “Three Finger” because of a childhood farm injury—was the dominant pitcher for the great Chicago Cubs team of the early twentieth century. Brown’s handicap enabled him to throw pitches with an unconventional movement that left batters bewildered—the curve ball that Ty Cobb once called “the most devastating” he had ever faced.How Brown responded to the Mafia’s threats in 1908 mirrored the way he took life in general: with unflappable courage and resolve. Telling his story for the first time, Cindy Thomson and Scott Brown track Mordecai from the Indiana countryside to the coal mines, from semipro ball to the Majors, from the World Series mound back down to the Minors. Along the way they retrieve the lost lore of one of baseball’s greatest pitchers and chronicle one man’s determination to attain a dream that most believed was unreachable.

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The concept and idea of survivance has revolutionized our understanding of the lives, creative impulses, literary practices, and histories of the Native peoples of North America. Engendered and articulated by the Anishinaabe critic and writer Gerald Vizenor, survivance throws into relief the dynamic, inventive, and enduring heart of Native cultures well beyond the colonialist trappings of absence, tragedy, and powerlessness. Vizenor argues that many people in the world are enamored with and obsessed by the concocted images of the Indian—the simulations of indigenous character and cultures as essential victims. Native survivance, on the other hand, is an active sense of presence over historical absence, deracination, and oblivion.The nature of survivance is unmistakable in Native stories, natural reason, active traditions, customs, and narrative resistance and is clearly observable in personal attributes such as humor, spirit, cast of mind, and moral courage in literature. In this anthology, eighteen scholars discuss the themes and practices of survivance in literature, examining the legacy of Vizenor’s original insights and exploring the manifestations of survivance in a variety of contexts.Contributors interpret and compare the original writings of William Apess, Eric Gansworth, Louis Owens, Carter Revard, Gerald Vizenor, and Velma Wallis, among others.

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Noting that the documents pertaining to the Battle of the Little Big Horn are often garbled in editing and quoted out of context, Loyd J. Overfield set out to compile the original orders, letters, and telegrams that put a great fighting machine into motion and soon conveyed the shock of its destruction. Far more readable than today's official documents, they carry the sound of individual voices and clearly state the circumstances surrounding Custer's fall. The communications of this collection begin with Custer's successful plea to President Grant, who in a fit of pique had originally forbidden him to join his regiment in fighting the hostile Indians. A series of carefully spelled-out field orders is followed by a letter from Major Marcus Reno asking for medical aid for his wounded men after two days of fighting. Included are dispatches from Reno, Gen. Alfred H. Terry, Col. John Gibbon, Capt. Frederick Benteen, and Capt. E.W. Smith. The rosters of officers and enlisted men who fought at the Little Big Horn will be of interest to Custer buffs and historians and also to family genealogists trying to trace ancestors who made history there. Overfield has provided primary sources that amount to a detailed postmortem of events from participants only too aware that history would ask questions.

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'Two Leggings ...was one of the last Crow Warriors. From 1919 to 1923 he told his story of Crow life and wars to William Wildschut, an ethnologist with the Museum of the American Indian ...This is the poignant story of the end of traditional Crow life and attitudes, which Two Leggings saw ending with the last warfare rather than the death of the buffalo' - "Pacific Historian". 'This is the story of Two Leggings' desire for fame, his rise as a warrior, and his efforts to achieve a spiritual vision. He takes us along on buffalo hunts, war parties against the Piegans, and horse stealing raids against the Piegans and Sioux. His obsession to become a chief and famous warrior drove him to repeated forays against enemy tribes for scalps and horses. He relates the religious relationship between vision fasts, medicine bundles, and a war raid's outcome, sun dances in which performers pierced their breast muscles with wooden skewers, and wife stealing between rival warrior societies...It is a remarkable story' - "Chicago Tribune". 'This is a rare piece of Americana - a first-person account of the psychological, religious, and social life of a nineteenth century Indian. The dramatic recital is a real contribution to our native biography, history, and ethnology, and an important treatise in a fascinating but curiously neglected field' - "Baltimore Sun". 'A valuable addition to our knowledge of the life of the Plains Indian' - "New York Times". '"Two Leggings" lifts the curtain on a kind of life it is almost impossible to imagine anywhere in the United States during the second half of the last century. Mr. Nabokov has preserved a priceless document not only for ethnologists bur for plain readers as well...His narrative lays open, as by a surgeon's knife, the inner world of Indian religion and morality' - Mark Van Doren. Peter Nabokov is on the faculty of the Department of Anthropology and the American Indian Studies Program, University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the author of "Native American Architecture" (1988) and editor of "Native American Testimony: A Chronicle of Indian and White Relations from Prophecy to the Present, 1492-1992" (1991).

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Graced with illustrations by the author, Crane Music introduces the two North American crane species. The sandhill, most often seen, is within easy reach of bird-watchers in the center of the continent. Less visible is the whooping crane, struggling back from near extinction. Paul Johnsgard follows these elegant birds through a year’s cycle, describing their seasonal migrations, natural habitats, breeding biology, call patterns—angelic to the bird-lover’s ear—and fascinating dancing.The largest and most spectacular migratory concentration of cranes happens each spring when the Platte River valley becomes the staging ground for an amazing gathering of four hundred thousand to five hundred thousand sandhills en route from the South to the Arctic tundra. Johnsgard describes this incredible event as well as memorable personal encounters with the cranes. His knowledge of them transcends natural history, covering their importance in religion and mythology.

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Married or Single?, published in 1857, was Catharine Maria Sedgwick’s final novel and a fitting climax to the career of one of antebellum America’s first and most successful woman writers. Insisting on women’s right to choose whether to marry, Married or Single? rejects the stigma of spinsterhood and offers readers a wider range of options for women in society, recognizing their need and ability to determine the course of their lives. Sedgwick’s touching, witty, and shrewdly observant novel centers on Grace Herbert, a New York City socialite who must negotiate the marriage market and also learn to develop her own character and take control of her own destiny. The story merges a wide range of popular American literary forms—including the seduction novel, the conversion narrative, the novel of education, and social reform fiction—and provides a window on many of the cultural and political anxieties of the 1850s beyond marriage, including immigration, slavery, and urban poverty. Sedgwick’s lifelong concern with women’s duties to the nation as citizens is demonstrated through her depiction of exemplary women of various backgrounds and circumstances who illustrate the idea that becoming a worthy human being is more important than becoming a wife, especially in a democratic society.

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Of Athapaskan and Tlingit ancestry, Angela Sidney, Kitty Smith, and Annie Ned lived in the southern Yukon Territory for nearly a century. They collaborated with Julie Cruikshank, an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, to produce this unique kind of autobiography.

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Since it was first published in 1932, A Frontier Lady has held a high and special place in the literature of Americas westward migration. Written in the 1880s at the request of her son, the philosopher and educator Josiah Royce, Sarah Royce's narrative of the family odyssey across the continent and of their early years in California is also the portrait of a remarkable woman. In the words of her daughter-in-law, "Wherever she was, she made civilization, even when it seemed that she had little indeed from which to make it."

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The Guitar in Jazz presents in rich, entertaining detail the history and development of the guitar as a jazz instrument. In a series of essays by some of jazz’s leading historians and critics, the volume traces the impressive evolution of jazz guitar playing, from the pioneering styles of Nick Lucas and Eddie Lang through the recent innovations of such contemporary masters as Jim Hall and Ralph Towner. Editor James Sallis has included essays that focus on individual guitarists, including Charlie Christian, Django Reinhardt, and JoePass. Other chapters vividly describe important jazz guitar styles, such as swing guitar and fingerstyle guitar. In all, The Guitar in Jazz provides a full and captivating portrait of the guitar’s place in jazz. The book also offers insights into the larger history of jazz—its development, the social contexts in which the music came into being, and its eventual recognition as "the American classical music." The essays will appeal to guitar players and enthusiasts, and to all jazz lovers.

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In Yuchi Indian Histories Before the Removal Era, folklorist and anthropologist Jason Baird Jackson and nine scholars of Yuchi (Euchee) Indian culture and history offer a revisionist and in-depth portrait of Yuchi community and society. This first interdisciplinary history of the Yuchi people corrects the historical record, which often submerges the Yuchi within the Creek Confederacy instead of acknowledging the Yuchi as a separate tribe.By looking at the oral, historical, ethnographic, linguistic, and archaeological record, contributors illuminate Yuchi political circumstances and cultural identity. Focusing on the pre-Removal era, the volume shows that from the entrada of Hernando de Soto into the American South in 1541 to the Yuchis’ internal migrations throughout the hinterlands of the South and their entanglement with the Creeks to the maintenance of community and identity today, the Yuchis have persisted as a distinct people. This volume provides a voice to an indigenous nation that previous generations of scholars have misidentified or erroneously assumed to be a simple constituent of the Creek Nation. In doing so, it offers a fuller picture of Yuchi social realities since the arrival of Europeans and other non-natives in their Southern homelands.

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The Northern Athabascan peoples of the Alaskan interior and the Yukon have survived centuries of contact and attempted domination by outsiders. Their lives today are rich in meaning and tradition yet are also complicated by numerous challenges such as poverty, alcoholism, domestic violence, suicide, and troubled leadership. Combining scholarly analysis, first-person accounts, and her own experiences and insights as a Koyukon Athabascan artist and anthropologist, Phyllis Ann Fast illuminates the modern Athabascan world. Her conversations with Athabascan women offer revealing glimpses of their personal lives and a probing assessment of their professional opportunities and limitations. Also showcased is the crucial but ambiguous role of Athabascan leaders, who are needed to champion reform and social healing but are often undermined by conflicting notions of decision making, personhood, and leadership in Athabascan society.A troubling observation of this study is the vast extent to which addiction—manifested as both substance abuse and economic dependency—pervades Northern Athabascan society and threatens to curtail its cohesion and aspirations. But Northern Athabascans are far from victims. As Fast discovers, Northern Athabascan men and women are well aware of these widespread social problems, and many have undertaken initiatives to deal with and heal them. Rigorous and compassionate, Northern Athabascan Survival provides an uncompromising view of a remarkable and troubled world.

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Although he has earned a reputation as a profound theologian, the author demonstrates in this small collection of sermons his ability to simplify the Christian message for the common reader.—BooklistThese twenty-three meditations on key passages from the Bible were originally delivered as addresses at colleges and universities. They are short, powerful, and persuasive examinations of the effect of God’s love on the life of the believer and the challenges of living the New Creation—“the infinite passion of every human being.” Tillich scholar Mary Ann Stenger provides a new introduction for this edition.

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2022 WHA Caughey Western History Prize for the most distinguished book on the American West Can a sea be a settler? What if it is a sea that exists only in the form of incongruous, head-scratching contradictions: a wetland in a desert, a wildlife refuge that poisons birds, a body of water in which fish suffocate? Traci Brynne Voyles’s history of the Salton Sea examines how settler colonialism restructures physical environments in ways that further Indigenous dispossession, racial capitalism, and degradation of the natural world. In other words, The Settler Sea asks how settler colonialism entraps nature to do settlers’ work for them. The Salton Sea, Southern California’s largest inland body of water, occupies the space between the lush agricultural farmland of the Imperial Valley and the austere desert called “America’s Sahara.” The sea sits near the boundary between the United States and Mexico and lies at the often-contested intersections of the sovereign lands of the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuillas and the state of California. Created in 1905, when overflow from the Colorado River combined with a poorly constructed irrigation system to cause the whole river to flow into the desert, this human-maintained body of water is considered a looming environmental disaster. The Salton Sea’s very precariousness—existing always in the interstices of human and natural influences, between desert and wetland, between the skyward pull of the sun and the constant inflow of polluted water—is both a symptom and symbol of the larger precariousness of settler relationships to the environment, in the West and beyond. Voyles provides an innovative exploration of the Salton Sea, looking to the ways the sea, its origins, and its role in human life have been vital to the people who call this region home.

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Winner of the 2021 San Diego Book Award Empire Builder is the previously untold story of a pioneer who almost singlehandedly transformed the bankrupt village of San Diego into a thriving city. When he first dropped anchor in San Diego Bay in 1887, John Diedrich Spreckels set into motion a series of events that later defined the city. Within just a few years, this son of the German immigrant Claus Spreckels, known as the “Sugar King,” owned and controlled the majority of San Diego’s industry. After successfully building empires in sugar, shipping, and transportation and building development along the coast of California and across the Pacific, Spreckels rubbed shoulders with world leaders, successfully sued the U.S. government twice, and contributed to numerous educational, charitable, and cultural institutions in San Diego and San Francisco. Despite the fact that Spreckels created and owned much of San Diego’s early twentieth-century infrastructure, his name is unknown to many contemporary San Diegans. Nobody could have foreseen that Spreckels’s empire would be all but forgotten in so short a time. Sandra E. Bonura strives to correct this oversight by providing a behind-the-scenes look at Spreckels and his family’s role in business. This deeply researched biography paints a realistic portrait of cultural, economic, and political aspects of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century California.

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With wry humor and imaginative acuity, noted writer Gerald Vizenor offers compelling glimpses of modern Native American life and the different ways that Native Americans and whites interact, fight, and resolve their conflicts. The elusive borderland between white and Native American cultures is further complicated by exchanges of money, services, language, and skills that make up what Vizenor calls the “new fur trade.” When Native Americans resist dominance, they fight back incisively and creatively with humor in the strategic word wars of survivance over victimry. Vizenor illuminates the troubling encounters and distant reaches of this modernist fur trade through his creative narratives. Especially memorable is the reincarnation of General George Custer as the head of Native American programs and the mystifying play of words between charity agencies and Native Americans. Several of Vizenor’s stories focus on a so-called urban reservation, Franklin Avenue in Minneapolis. In the last section Vizenor recalls his experiences and observations while reporting on the murder trial of a young Native American student, Thomas White Hawk, in South Dakota.

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Master storyteller Ralph Moody tells the thrilling story of a plucky horse who refused to quit, a down-on-his-luck jockey who didn’t let horrendous accidents keep him out of the saddle, and a taciturn trainer who brought out the best in both. During the Great Depression, Seabiscuit captured the hearts of Americans from the streets to the White House, winning more money than any horse at that time and shattering speed records across the country. In this real-life story Moody captures the hoof-pounding excitement of the explosive early races to an unforgettable showdown with the feared Triple Crown winner War Admiral. Moving and inspirational, Come on Seabiscuit! is a reminder of the qualities that make a real American champion. Ralph Moody is best known for his eight Little Britches books, which have delighted generations of readers and are all available in Bison Books editions. Ralph Moody captured the hearts of young readers everywhere with his beloved Little Britches saga. In this Bison Books edition of his 1963 classic, Moody brings to life the story of a knobby-kneed little colt called Seabiscuit, who against all odds became one of the most celebrated racehorses of all time. Although Seabiscuit was the grandson of the legendary Man O' War, he was neither handsome nor graceful. His head was too big, his legs too short, and his gallop was awkward. His owners gave up on Seabiscuit when he was two, raced him too heavily, and tried unsuccessfully to sell him. It took the keen eyes of trainer Tom Smith to recognize the heart, courage, and gallant determination of Seabiscuit, the qualities of a truly great horse. Smith's unfailing patience and astute treatments, the love and skill of jockey Red Pollard, and the continued support of owner Charles Howard forged Seabiscuit into a champion.Purchase the audio edition.

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