Recently identified as a killer, tobacco has been the focus of health warnings, lawsuits, and political controversy. Yet many Native Americans continue to view tobacco-when used properly-as a life-affirming and sacramental substance that plays a significant role in Native creation myths and religious ceremonies.This definitive work presents the ......
"Shootin' - Lynchin' - Hangin'," announces the advertisement for Tombstone's Helldorado Days festival. Dodge City's Boot Hill Cemetery sports an 'authentic hangman's tree.' Not to be outdone, Deadwood's Days of '76 celebration promises 'miners, cowboys, Indians, cavalry, bars, dance halls and gambling dens.' The Wild West may be long gone, but ......
For travelers passing through northern Navajo country, the desert landscape appears desolate. The few remaining Navajo trading posts, once famous for their bustling commerce, seem unimpressive. Yet a closer look at the economic and creative activity in this region, which straddles northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southeastern ......
For five decades, as a singer, musician, songwriter, and producer, Tim O'Brien has ceaselessly explored the vast American musical landscape. While Appalachia and Ireland eventually became facets of the defining myth surrounding him and his music, he has digested a broad array of roots styles, reshaping them to his own purposes. Award-winning ......
2021: As the centennial of one of the nation's worst race massacres approached, citizens of Tulsa faced the prospect with hope and dread. Hope that the anniversary would show Tulsa had changed since that day in 1921, when a white mob left the city's thriving African American Greenwood neighborhood a smoldering ruin. Dread that Tulsa's faults would ......
A Saga of Morphine and Mayhem in the Arizona Territory
Georgie Clifford appears briefly in the annals of American history as an 1894 inmate of the Yuma Territorial Prison, one of two female prisoners among hundreds of hardened, violent men. A denizen of an Old West underworld of prostitution and narcotics, she had been convicted of murder for giving a lethal dose of morphine to a client. Telling ......
Gladys Reichard and Western Native American Culture
A trailblazer in Native American linguistics and anthropology, Gladys Reichard (1893-1955) is one of America's least appreciated anthropologists. Her accomplishments were obscured in her lifetime by differences in intellectual approach and envy, as well as academic politics and the gender realities of her age. This biography offers the first full ......
Wildfire, Flooding, and the Fight for Climate Resilience in the American West
Epic wildfire. Devastating drought. Cataclysmic flooding. Extreme weather in the wake of climate change threatens to turn the American West into a region hostile to human habitation - a 'Great American Desert,' as early US explorers once mislabeled it. As Bruce E. Cain suggests in this timely book, the unique complex of politics, technology, and ......
Wildfire, Flooding, and the Fight for Climate Resilience in the American West
Epic wildfire. Devastating drought. Cataclysmic flooding. Extreme weather in the wake of climate change threatens to turn the American West into a region hostile to human habitation-a "Great American Desert," as early US explorers once mislabeled it. As Bruce E. Cain suggests in this timely book, the unique complex of politics, technology, and ......