Search results for ""University of Nevada Press""

Bright Lights in the Desert explores the history of how members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Las Vegas have improved the regions' neighborhoods, inspired educational institutions, brought integrity to the marketplace, and provided wholesome entertainment and cultural refinement. The LDS influence has helped shape the metropolitan city because of its members' focus on family values and community service.Woods discusses how, through their beliefs and work ethics, they have impacted the growth of the area from the time of their first efforts to establish a mission in 1855 through the present day. Bright Lights in the Desert reveals Las Vegas as more than just a tourist destination and shows the LDS community's commitment to making it a place of deep religious faith and devotion to family.

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A Guide to Common Plants of Lake Mead National Recreation Area is the definitive book for weekend explorers and botanists alike who venture into LMNRA ready to discover the many wonders of the local flora. The authors highlight 183 plants that hikers are most likely to encounter along popular trails, washes, and surrounding hot springs, helping the area's millions of annual visitors identify and enjoy these common plants. This guide includes photos and descriptions of each plant, along with a map of LMNRA.The authors also provide a primer on plant ecology, including a guide to plant structures, desert adaptations and life forms, plant-to-plant interactions, and plant-animal interactions. Plants are grouped by life forms, such as tree, shrub, cactus, or grass, and by flower color within the wildflower section. The guide will encourage readers to pause and look carefully at each plant they encounter, giving them an enriched experience during their exploration.

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First held in 1987, Jaialdi is the United States's largest Basque festival and takes place in Boise every five years. Through vivid photography and a recounting of personal interviews with event founders and organizers, Jaialdi: A Celebration of Basque Culture provides a stunning account of how the ancient traditions of these industrious people are showcased through the activities and events of Jaialdi.​Organized and staffed entirely by volunteers, Jaialdi attracts 35,000 to 50,000 visitors from around the world. Attendees enjoy festivities featuring Basque culture, including dancing, music, food, and competitive feats of strength. Photographer Jon C. Hodgson captures the spirit and merriment of the festival in vivid detail, taking readers on a journey into the heart of Basque culture. Coupled with author Nancy Zubiri's observations from her own attendance at nearly every Jaialdi since 1987, the book reveals how Boise's Basque community has committed to host the festival and why the celebration remains so popular today. The Basque diaspora to the United States began in the late 1800s when these determined immigrants came seeking a new life filled with opportunities. Many were sheepherders who adapted to American life while maintaining their ties to the traditions of the Basque Country. Jaialdi: A Celebration of Basque Culture illuminates how this festival honors these traditions and captures the essence of the ancient Basque people, who are preserving their heritage while embracing life in the twenty-first-century West.

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In the words of literary luminaries, newspaper articles, public documents, personal letters, political speeches and personal accounts this is an attempt to define Nevada's colorful and complex development. It describes life in a mining boomtown, racial segregation in Las Vegas, political careers and atomic testing whilst through photographs we are shown significant Nevada architecture, the masterpieces of renowned Paiute basketmaker Dat-so-la-lee and tree carvings by sheepherders. The collection ranges from the earliest descriptions of the region to the current debate on Yucca Mountain.

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Gioia Woods and her contributors bring together histories, biographies, close readings, and theories about the literary and cultural left in the American West. Left in the West expands our understanding of what constitutes the literary left in the United States by including writers, artists, and movements not typically considered within the traditional context of the literary left. In doing so, it provides a new understanding of the region’s place among global and political ideologies.From the early nineteenth century to the present, a complex and varied body of literary and cultural production has emerged out of progressive social movements. While the literary left in the West shared many interests with other regional expressions—labor, class, anti-fascism, and anti-imperialism, the influence of Manifest Destiny—the distinct history of settler colonialism in western territories caused western leftists to develop concerns unique to the region.Chapters in this volume cover artists and movements from suffragist writers to bohemian Californian photographers, civil rights activists to popular folk musicians, and Latinx memoirists to Native American experimental writers.The unique consideration of the West as a sociopolitical region establishes a framework for political critique that moves beyond class consequences, anti-fascism, and civil liberties, and into distinct western concerns such as Native American sovereignty, environmental exploitation, and the legacies of settler colonialism.

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In this tale of Las Vegas during the two delirious boom decades before the bust of the Great Recession, a failed actor is slowly losing his moral and existential compass. Douglas Unger pits the ideologies of marketing and consumerism in the casino economy against the erosion of individual and humane values that success in that world demands.

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Mining in North America has long been criticized for its impact on the natural environment. Mica Jorgenson's The Weight of Gold explores the history of Ontario, Canada's rise to prominence in the gold mining industry, while detailing a series of environmental crises related to extraction activities. In Ontario in 1909, the discovery of exceptionally rich hard rock gold deposits in the Abitibi region in the north precipitated industrial development modeled on precedents in Australia, South Africa, and the United States. By the late 1920s, Ontario's mines had reached their maturity, and in 1928, Minister of Mines Charles McRae called Canada "the mineral treasure house to [the] world."Mining companies increasingly depended upon their ability to redistribute the burdens of mining onto surrounding communities—a strategy they continue to use today—both at home and abroad. Jorgenson connects Canadian gold mining to its international context, revealing that Ontario's gold mines informed extractive knowledge which would go on to shape Canada's mining industry over the next century.

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Bristol takes readers on a journey through the history of Glacier National Park, beginning over a billion years ago from the formation of the Belt Sea, to the present day climate-changing extinction of the very glaciers that sculpted most of the wonders of its landscapes. He delves into the ways in which this area of Montana seemed to have been preparing itself for the coming of humankind through a series of landmass adjustments like the Lewis Overthrust and the ice ages that came and went. First there were tribes of Native Americans whose deep regard for nature left the landscape intact. They were followed by Euro-American explorers and settlers who may have been awed by the new lands, but began to move wildlife to near extinction. Fortunately for the area that would become Glacier, some began to recognize that laying siege to nature and its bounties would lead to wastelands. Bristol recounts how a renewed conservation ethic fostered by such leaders as Emerson, Thoreau, Olmstead, Muir, and Teddy Roosevelt took hold. Their disciples were Grinnell, Hill, Mather, Albright, and Franklin Roosevelt, and they would not only take up the call but rally for the cause. These giants would create and preserve a park landscape to accommodate visitors and wilderness alike.

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The Basque language is one of Europe's most ancient, its origins as mysterious as those of the Basque people themselves. It is also the official language of Euskadi, the bustling, modern Basque Autonomous Region of Spain, and the preferred tongue of tens of thousands of Basques and their descendants living in the European Basque Country and in diaspora around the world. Aurrera! is a comprehensive text for beginning-level students who are learning Basque (the Batua form approved by the Academy of the Basque Language) in a classroom setting or on their own. Each chapter introduces an element of grammar and offers students new vocabulary, written and spoken exercises, dialogues, and other activities that demonstrate the language in action, plus Basque reading texts that will entertain while they illustrate the material covered in the chapter. The complexities of Basque grammar are explained in clear, easy-to-understand terms, and the dialogues and exercises introduce students to common idioms and the basics of social conversation. Volume 1 covers material for the first two semesters of college-level language-classroom work. It is also designed to give independent learners a sound foundation in the language that will allow them to make their own way in a Basque-speaking environment and to read basic Basque texts.

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John Wesley Powell's 1869 expedition down the Green and Colorado Rivers and through the Grand Canyon continues to be one of the most celebrated adventures in American history, ranking with the Lewis and Clark expedition and the Apollo landings on the moon. For nearly twenty years Lago has researched the Powell expedition from new angles, traveled to thirteen states, and looked into archives and other sources no one else has searched. He has come up with many important new documents that change and expand our basic understanding of the expedition by looking into Powell's crewmembers, some of whom have been almost entirely ignored by Powell historians. Historians tended to assume that Powell was the whole story and that his crewmembers were irrelevant. More seriously, because several crew members made critical comments about Powell and his leadership, historians who admired Powell were eager to ignore and discredit them.Lago offers a feast of new and important material about the river trip, and it will significantly rewrite the story of Powell's famous expedition. This book is not only a major work on the Powell expedition, but on the history of American exploration of the West.

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Low income and first-generation students comprise a significant portion of today’s college student population. The articles in this publication examine the various programs and strategies that are designed to support student success for these populations.

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Grand Canyon has been saved from dams three times in the last century. Unthinkable as it may seem today, many people promoted damming the Colorado River in the canyon during the early twentieth century as the most feasible solution to the water and power needs of the Pacific Southwest. These efforts reached their climax during the 1960s when the federal government tried to build two massive hydroelectric dams in Grand Canyon. Although not located within the Grand Canyon National Park or Monument, they would have flooded lengthy unprotected reaches of the canyon and along thirteen miles of the park boundary.Saving Grand Canyon tells the remarkable true story of the attempts to build dams in one of America's most spectacular natural wonders. Based on twenty-five years of research, this fascinating ride through history chronicles a century of Colorado River water development demonstrates how the National Environmental Policy Act came out of these controversies, and debunks the myth that the Sierra Club saved Grand Canyon. It also shows how the Sierra Club parlayed public perception as the canyon's savior into the leadership of the modern environmental movement after the National Environmental Policy Act became law.The tale of the Sierra Club stopping the dams has become so entrenched—and so embellished—that many historians, popular writers, and filmmakers have ignored the documented historical record. This epic story puts the events from 1963-68 into the broader the context of Colorado River water development and debunks 50 years of Colorado River water development and Grand Canyon history.

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The Battle to Stay in America is the story of a community coming to grips with the federal government's crackdown on immigrants and learning how to defend itself. Informative and personal, this is a story about mothers and fathers, lawyers and activists, local police and federal agencies, and a struggle for the identity of a nation. This is the quintessential story of the war on immigrants, as fought and felt on the front lines in the heart of America.

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From the sculptured peaks of Mount Rushmore to the Coloradan prairie lands at Sand Creek to the idyllic islands of the Pacific, the West's signature environments add a new dimension to the study of memorials. In such diverse and often dramatic landscapes, how do the natural and built environments shape our emotions?In Memorials Matter, author Jennifer Ladino investigates the natural and physical environments of seven diverse National Park Service (NPS) sites in the American West and how they influence emotions about historical conflict and national identity. Chapters center around the region's diverse inhabitants (Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, African, and Native Americans) and the variously traumatic histories these groups endured—histories of oppression, exploitation, incarceration, slavery, and genocide. Drawing on material ecocritical theory, Ladino emphasizes the ideological and political importance of memorials and how they evoke visceral responses that are not always explicitly 'storied,' but nevertheless matter in powerful ways. In this unique blend of narrative scholarship and critical theory, Ladino demonstrates how these memorial sites and their surrounding landscapes, combined with written texts, generate emotion and shape our collective memory of traumatic events. She urges us to consider our everyday environments and to become attuned to features and feelings we might have otherwise overlooked.

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Against a backdrop rich with purples, blues, and shades of black, a blaze of stars glittering across a vast empty sky spurs our curiosity about the past, driving us inevitably to ponder the future. For millennia, the night sky has been a collective canvas for our stories, maps, traditions, beliefs, and discoveries. Over the course of time, continents have formed and eroded, sea levels have risen and fallen, the chemistry of our atmosphere has changed, and yet the daily cycle of light to dark has remained pretty much the same . . . until the last 100 years." - Karen Trevino, from the forewordNo matter where we live, what language we speak, or what culture shapes our worldview, there is always the night. The darkness is a reminder of the ebb and flow, of an opportunity to recharge, of the movement of time. But how many of us have taken the time to truly know a starry night? To really know it.Combining the lyrical writing of Paul Bogard with the stunning night-sky photography of Beau Rogers, To Know a Starry Night explores the powerful experience of being outside under a natural starry sky--how important it is to human life, and how so many people don't know this experience. As the night sky increasingly becomes flooded with artificial-light pollution, this poignant work helps us reconnect with the natural darkness of night, an experience that now, in our time, is fading from our lives.

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The development of the modern world has brought with it rampant light pollution, destroying the ancient mystery of night and exacting a terrible price--wasted energy, damage to human health, and the sometimes fatal interruption of the life patterns of many species of wildlife. In Let There Be Night, twenty-nine writers, scientists, poets, and scholars share their personal experiences of night and help us to understand what we miss when dark skies and nocturnal wildness vanish. They also propose ways by which we might restore the beneficence of true night skies to our cities and our culture. Let There Be Night is an engaging examination, both intimate and enlightening, of a precious aspect of the natural world. The diverse voices and perceptions gathered here provide a statement of hope that he ancient magic of night can be returned to our lives.

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Nevada’s politics are in large measure the result of its turbulent history and harsh environment. Michael W. Bowers’s concise volume explains the dynamics of the political formation process, which is strikingly unique among the fifty states. Even today, Nevada is unlike the other states in its politics and culture: economically right, yet libertarian and home to widespread gaming and a 24/7 lifestyle. It has a high percentage of federally owned lands and one of the highest rates of urbanism in the United States, yet is often dominated by rural legislators.This comprehensive and insightful explanation discusses how Nevada’s history has shaped its political culture, and how its government operates today. The Sagebrush State serves as a highly readable and accessible text for the study of Nevada’s political history and constitution, which is a graduation requirement at the state’s colleges and universities. The fifth edition is updated through 2017 and includes the full text of the state constitution with extensive annotations of all amendments to the original 1864 document.

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Since its first publication in 1994, Alan R. King's introduction to the Basque language has become the standard textbook for classroom language students and individuals learning this unique language on their own. It offers clear explanations of grammatical structure, exercises that allow students to practice grammatical and communication skills, dialogues and narrative texts that provide a glimpse into Basque social and family life. It also provides exercises in pronunciation and tips for instructors and students to help them achieve fluency in modern Basque.

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Explores the emergence, dynamics, and effects of the United States Company, and how its mining operations shaped the business, environmental, political, and scientific landscape of North America in the first half of the twentieth century.

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Weave Me a Crooked Basket is an unconventional love story featuring a makeshift coalition of farmers, artists, scientists and community members who turn a small organic farm into a work of art to save it from unscrupulous developers. Facing bankruptcy, Ursula Tunder and her polar-opposite-brother, Bodie, along with their eco-artist adopted-cousin, Nu, enlist a ragtag troupe of land-defenders in a festival of resistance.

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