George Olin has gained a wide reputation as a keen observer of nature. In books such as Mammals of the Southwestern Deserts and House in the Sun, his writing and photography have enchanted those who want to know more about the desert and its animals—even people who already live there.

In this charming memoir, Olin combines personal and natural history to recount his long fascination with animals. In addition to painting a vivid picture of his nomadic life, he describes the ingenious methods he devised to observe desert creatures and build their trust—and the lessons they taught him in return.

Olin takes readers back to 1951, when he and his wife, Irene, were hired as fire lookouts in Arizona's Huachuca Mountains. There, where golden eagles soared and rock squirrels scampered, they befriended a wide variety of animals, from skunks to coatis, and knew they had found satisfaction. The following year they participated in the founding of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson and were in on its construction from the ground up. As a ranger and later the park naturalist at Saguaro National Monument, Olin became acquainted with more of the desert's creatures, sharpened his photographic skills, and even studied pollination of saguaro cactus by bats and other creatures.

Following eight years spent working for the Park Service in the East, the Olins returned to their beloved desert as retirees. There George embarked upon a night photography project, following foxes, skunks, raccoons, and ringtail cats on their nocturnal rounds, and later extending his study to kit foxes and kangaroo rats. Up Close contains a wealth of information about what he learned on those outings, and his engaging tales of personal encounters with these and other denizens of the desert will make even Gila monsters, wood rats, and scorpions seem less threatening for readers who flinch at the very thought of them.

Up Close is a warm and enjoyable book, chock full of Olin's charming photographs, that makes the desert and its creatures come alive. It will delight all who love the Southwest and instill a sense of wonder in anyone fascinated by the natural world.

Atomic energy is not only invisible, it has been cloaked in secrecy by government, industry, and the military. Yet for many Americans the effects of radiation have been less than secret. Just ask the radium workers in Ottawa, Illinois, the "downwinders" of Utah, or unsuspecting veterans of the Gulf War.

When told from the perspective of ordinary people, nuclear history takes on a much different tone from that of the tranquil voices of authority who always told us we had nothing to fear. In Learning to Glow, twenty-four essays testify to many of the unsuspected human and environmental costs of atomic science. They show that Americans have paid a terrible price for supposedly "winning" the Cold War--for although the nuclear nightmare may be over, we are still living with nuclear threats every day.

Writers such as Scott Russell Sanders, Terry Tempest Williams, and Barbara Kingsolver reveal the psychic and emotional fallout of the Cold War and of subsequent developments in nuclear science. The essays include personal testimonies of what it was like to grow up with family members in nuclear-related jobs; hard-hitting journalism on the health and environmental costs of our nuclear policies and practices; and poignant stories of coming to terms with nuclear power, including contributions by writers who revisit Hiroshima in an attempt to heal the wounds left by the Bomb.

These essays offer an alternative to the official version of nuclear history as told to us by school textbooks, government authorities, and nuclear industry officials. They are stories of and by ordinary people who have suffered the consequences of the decisions made by those in power-stories that have been largely ignored, dismissed, or suppressed. They will challenge readers to re-examine their preconceptions about the way we deal with issues of nuclear arms and radioactive waste because they show that nuclear history does not belong to experts but to us all.

Contributors:

Marilou Awiakta

John Bradley

Jim Carrier

Alison Hawthorne Deming

Mary Dickson

Edward Dougherty

Ray Gonzalez

Karl Grossman

Sonya Huber

Barbara Kingsolver

Valerie Kuletz

Mary Laufer

Kay Mack

Craig McGrath

Bill Mesler

Richard H. Minear

Randy Morris

Mayumi Oda

Catherine Quigg

Richard Rawles

Kenneth Robbins

Scott Russell Sanders

David Seaborg

Terry Tempest Williams

Bill Witherup

Phil Woods

Perhaps you know them for their deer dances or for their rich Easter ceremonies, or perhaps only from the writings of anthropologists or of Carlos Castaneda. But now you can come to know the Yaqui Indians in a whole new way.

Anita Endrezze, born in California of a Yaqui father and a European mother, has written a multilayered work that interweaves personal, mythical, and historical views of the Yaqui people. Throwing Fire at the Sun, Water at the Moon is a blend of ancient myths, poetry, journal extracts, short stories, and essays that tell her people's story from the early 1500s to the present, and her family's story over the past five generations. Reproductions of Endrezze's paintings add an additional dimension to her story and illuminate it with striking visual imagery.

Endrezze has combed history and legend to gather stories of her immediate family and her mythical ancient family, the two converging in the spirit of storytelling. She tells Aztec and Yaqui creation stories, tales of witches and seductresses, with recurring motifs from both Yaqui and Chicano culture. She shows how Christianity has deeply infused Yaqui beliefs, sharing poems about the Flood and stories of a Yaqui Jesus. She re-creates the coming of the Spaniards through the works of such historical personages as Andrés Pérez de Ribas. And finally she tells of those individuals who carry the Yaqui spirit into the present day. People like the Esperanza sisters, her grandmothers, and others balance characters like Coyote Woman and the Virgin of Guadalupe to show that Yaqui women are especially important as carriers of their culture.

Greater than the sum of its parts, Endrezze's work is a new kind of family history that features a startling use of language to invoke a people and their past--a time capsule with a female soul. Written to enable her to understand more about her ancestors and to pass this understanding on to her own children, Throwing Fire at the Sun, Water at the Moon helps us gain insight not only into Yaqui culture but into ourselves as well.

Young Pal needs help with his dreaming. Palimony Blue Larue, a mixblood growing up in a small California town, suffers from a painful shyness and wants more than anything to be liked. That's why Mary Blue, his Nez Perce mother, has dreamed the weyekin, the spirit guide, to help her bring into the world the one lasting love her son needs to overcome the diffidence that runs so deep in his blood. The magical (and not totally competent) weyekin pops in and out of Pal's life at the most unexpected times—and in the most unlikely guises—but seems to have difficulty setting him on the right path. Is there any hope for Palimony Blue? Don't ask his father, La Vent Larue; La Vent is past hope, past help, a city zoning planner and a pawn in the mayor's development plans who ends up crazy and in jail after he shoots the mayor in the—well, never mind. Better to ask Pal's mother, who summons the weyekin when she isn't working on a cradle board for Pal and his inevitable bride. And while you're at it, ask the women in Pal's life: Sally the preacher's daughter, Brandy the waitressing flautist, Tara the spoiled socialite. And be sure to ask Amanda, if you can catch her. If you can dream her. Using comic vision to address serious concerns of living, Penn has written a freewheeling novel that will surpass most readers' expectations of "ethnic fiction." Instead of the usual polemics, it's marked by a sense of humor and a playfulness of language that springs directly from Native American oral tradition. What more can be said about a book that has to be read to the end in order to get to the beginning? That Killing Time with Strangers is unlike any novel you have read before? Or perhaps that it is agonizingly familiar, giving us glimpses of a young man finding his precarious way in life? But when the power of dreaming is unleashed, time becomes negotiable and life's joys and sorrows go up for grabs. And as sure as yellow butterflies will morph into Post-It notes, you will know you have experienced a new and utterly captivating way of looking at the world.