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The University of Arizona Press is the premier publisher of academic, regional, and literary works in the state of Arizona. They disseminate ideas and knowledge of lasting value that enrich understanding, inspire curiosity, and enlighten readers. They advance the University of Arizona’s mission by connecting scholarship and creative expression to readers worldwide.

Showing 301-350 of 1,685 items.

Mimbres during the Twelfth Century

Abandonment, Continuity, and Reorganization

The University of Arizona Press
  • Copyright year: 1999
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New Latina Narrative

The Feminine Space of Postmodern Ethnicity

The University of Arizona Press
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Under the Devil's Thumb

The University of Arizona Press
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Under the Devil's Thumb

The University of Arizona Press

David Gessner first moved to Colorado in the wake of a bout with cancer. In Under the Devil's Thumb, this young New Englander takes readers on a joyous quest to discover the mysteries of the western landscape and the landscape of the soul as well.

In the West Gessner began to rewrite his life. Under the Devil's Thumb is a story of rugged determination and sweat, as well as humor, adventure and hope. In and around his new hometown of Boulder, Colorado, Gessner hiked hard and ran alongside flooded creeks. He found that the West was a place of stories—stories that grow out of the ground, flow out of the dirt, work their way through one's limbs, and drive people to push their physical limits.

Hiking up scree slopes toward the Devil's Thumb, a massive outcrop of orange rock that attracts climbers, hikers, and contemplaters, Gessner reflects on the illness he has so recently survived. He pushes his physical limits, hoping to outrun death, to outrun dread. He finds momentary transcendence in the joys and self-inflicted pain of mountain biking. "Nothing but the hardest ride has the power to flush out worry, mind clutter, and dread." In tranquil moments he seeks a chance to recover an animal self that is strong and powerful enough to conquer mountains, but also still and quiet enough to see things human beings ignore.

In the mountain West, Gessner finds what Wallace Stegner called "the geography of hope." He finds within himself an interior landscape that is healthy and strong. Combining memoir, nature writing, and travel writing, Under the Devil's Thumb is one man's journey deep into a place of healing.

  • Copyright year: 1999
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Hopi Dwellings

Architectural Change at Orayvi

The University of Arizona Press
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Sedentism and Mobility in a Social Landscape

Mesa Verde and Beyond

The University of Arizona Press
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Speaking Chicana

Voice, Power, and Identity

The University of Arizona Press
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In a Desert Garden

Love and Death among the Insects

The University of Arizona Press
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Glen Canyon Dammed

The University of Arizona Press

Growth is a major issue in the contemporary American West, especially as more and more towns and states turn to tourism to spark their economies. But growth has a flip side—loss—about which we seldom think until something is irrevocably gone.

Where once was Glen Canyon, with its maze of side-canyons leading to the Colorado River, now is Lake Powell, second largest reservoir in America, attracting some three million visitors a year. Many who come here think they have found paradise, and for good reason: it's beautiful. However, the loss of Glen Canyon was monumental—to many, a notorious event that remains unresolved.

Focusing on the saddening, maddening example of Glen Canyon, Jared Farmer traces the history of exploration and development in the Four Corners region, discusses the role of tourism in changing the face of the West, and shows how the "invention" of Lake Powell has served multiple needs. He also seeks to identify the point at which change becomes loss: How do people deal with losing places they love? How are we to remember or restore lost places? By presenting Glen Canyon as a historical case study in exploitation, Farmer offers a cautionary tale for the future of this spectacular region. In assessing the necessity and impact of tourism, he questions whether merely visiting such places is really good for people's relationships with each other and with the land, suggesting a new ethic whereby westerners learn to value what remains of their environment.

Glen Canyon Dammed was written so that the canyon country's perennial visitors might better understand the history of the region, its legacy of change, and their complicity in both. A sobering book that recalls lost beauty, it also speaks eloquently for the beauty that may still be saved.

  • Copyright year: 1999
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Grasshopper Pueblo

A Story of Archaeology and Ancient Life

The University of Arizona Press
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Men on the Moon

Collected Short Stories

The University of Arizona Press
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The Last Tortilla

and Other Stories

The University of Arizona Press
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The Last Tortilla

The University of Arizona Press

"She asked me if I liked them. And what could I say? They were wonderful." From the very beginning of Sergio Troncoso's celebrated story "Angie Luna," we know we are in the hands of a gifted storyteller.

Born of Mexican immigrants, raised in El Paso, and now living in New York City, Troncoso has a rare knack for celebrating life. Writing in a straightforward, light-handed style reminiscent of Grace Paley and Raymond Carver, he spins charming tales that reflect his experiences in two worlds.

Troncoso's El Paso is a normal town where common people who happen to be Mexican eat, sleep, fall in love, and undergo epiphanies just like everyone else. His tales are coming-of-age stories from the Mexican-American border, stories of the working class, stories of those coping with the trials of growing old in a rapidly changing society. He also explores New York with vignettes of life in the big city, capturing its loneliness and danger.

Beginning with Troncoso's widely acclaimed story "Angie Luna," the tale of a feverish love affair in which a young man rediscovers his Mexican heritage and learns how much love can hurt, these stories delve into the many dimensions of the human condition. We watch boys playing a game that begins innocently but takes a dangerous turn. We see an old Anglo woman befriending her Mexican gardener because both are lonely. We witness a man terrorized in his New York apartment, taking solace in memories of lost love.

Two new stories will be welcomed by Troncoso's readers. "My Life in the City" relates a transplanted Texan's yearning for companionship in New York, while "The Last Tortilla" returns to the Southwest to explore family strains after a mother's death--and the secret behind that death. Each reflects an insight about the human heart that has already established the author's work in literary circles.

Troncoso sets aside the polemics about social discomfort sometimes found in contemporary Chicano writing and focuses instead on the moral and intellectual lives of his characters. The twelve stories gathered here form a richly textured tapestry that adds to our understanding of what it is to be human.

  • Copyright year: 1999
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From the Belly of My Beauty

The University of Arizona Press
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The Federal Landscape

An Economic History of the Twentieth-Century West

The University of Arizona Press

Historian Gerald D. Nash has written the first account of the epic growth of the economy of the American West during the twentieth century, showing how national interests shaped the West.

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Last Rampage

The Escape of Gary Tison

The University of Arizona Press
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Memory Fever

The University of Arizona Press
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Rethinking World-Systems

Diasporas, Colonies, and Interaction in Uruk Mesopotamia

The University of Arizona Press
  • Copyright year: 1999
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The Desert Gardener's Calendar

Your Month-by-Month Guide

The University of Arizona Press
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Hoover Dam

The Photographs of Ben Glaha

The University of Arizona Press
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The Nature of Cities

Ecocriticism and Urban Environments

The University of Arizona Press
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In Search of Snow

The University of Arizona Press
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To Show Heart

Native American Self-Determination and Federal Indian Policy, 1960-1975

The University of Arizona Press
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Amor Eterno

Eleven Lessons in Love

The University of Arizona Press
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Amor Eterno

Eleven Lessons in Love

The University of Arizona Press
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from Sand Creek

The University of Arizona Press
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Saving the Gray Whale

People, Politics, and Conservation in Baja California

The University of Arizona Press
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The Last of the Ofos

The University of Arizona Press
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Turtle Pictures

The University of Arizona Press
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Turtle Pictures

The University of Arizona Press

The rhythm of vision, the rhythm of dream, the rhythm of voices saturating the hot southwestern landscape. These are the rhythms of Ray Gonzalez, the haunting incantations of Turtle Pictures.

Gonzalez has forged a new Chicano manifesto, a cultural memoir that traces both his personal journey and the communal journey that ...

  • Copyright year: 2000
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Life Woven with Song

The University of Arizona Press
  • Copyright year: 2000
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The Animals Came Dancing

Native American Sacred Ecology and Animal Kinship

The University of Arizona Press
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Up Close

A Lifetime Observing and Photographing Desert Animals

The University of Arizona Press
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Up Close

The University of Arizona Press

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.

  • Copyright year: 2000
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A Latina in the Land of Hollywood

and Other Essays on Media Culture

The University of Arizona Press
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Learning to Glow

A Nuclear Reader

Edited by John Bradley
The University of Arizona Press
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Learning to Glow

The University of Arizona Press

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

  • Copyright year: 2000
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Throwing Fire at the Sun, Water at the Moon

The University of Arizona Press

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.

  • Copyright year: 2000
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