New in Southwest 2020-2025

Letras y Limpias is the first book to explore the literary significance of the figure of the curandera within Mexican American literature. Amanda Ellis traces the significance of the curandera and her evolution across a variety of genres written by leading Mexican American authors, including Américo Paredes, Rudolfo Anaya, Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Manuel Munoz, ire'ne lara silva, and more. Ellis explores the curandera in relationship to decoloniality, bioethics, and the topic of healing while recognizing the limitations and spiritual shortcomings of Western medicine. Ellis argues that our contemporary western health-care system does not know how to fully grapple with illnesses that patients face. Ellis reads the curandera's perennial representation as an ongoing example of decolonial love useful for deconstructing narrow definitions of health and personhood, and for grappling with the effects of neoliberalism and colonialism on the health-care industry. Letras y Limpias draws from Chicana feminist theory to assert the importance of the mindbodyspirit connection. Ellis conveys theoretical insights about the continual reimagining of the figure of the curandera as a watermark across Mexican American literary texts. This literary figure points to the oppressive forces that create susto and reminds us that healing work requires specific attention to colonialism, its legacy, and an intentional choice to carry forward the traditional practices rooted in curanderismo passed on from prior generations. By turning toward the figure of the curandera, readers are better poised to challenge prevailing ideas about health, and imagine ways to confront the ongoing problems that coloniality creates. Letras y Limpias shows how the figure of the curandera offers us ways to heal that have nothing to do with copays or medical professionals refusing care, and everything to do with honoring the beauty and complexity of any, every, and all humans.  

"McPherson, through this oral history of Navajo Women living in Monument Valley, provides a unique story of cultural understanding specific to the area. From personal experience and a shared heritage, these women explain their early struggles in life, religious beliefs and sacred teachings, daily activities of a traditional family, and later, battling against cultural loss. Today's rapidly changing world challenges these elders while enticing the young to forget what it means to be Diné. Here, these women share what they want the youth to know. I highly recommend this book to those who wish to learn about the past, understand the present, and consider the future." --Ronald P. Maldonado, Navajo Nation Cultural Resource Supervisor "The teachings and stories presented here are fascinating and important. When reading them, I heard my granmother's and aunt's voices, connecting me to the past while strengthening my understanding of Navajo culture. It is the women who are the heard and soul of preserving this information as they guide youth into the future. Here that wisdom becomes real. Those interested in a balanced presentation of the difficult, yet rewarding live of Navajo elders will be highly rewarded by learning from this book" --Charlotte Nez Lacy, Heritage Language Educator/Translator

Arizona's art history is emblematic of the story of the modern West, and few periods in that history were more significant than the era of the New Deal. From Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams to painters and muralists including Native American Gerald Nailor, the artists working in Arizona under New Deal programs were a notable group whose art served a distinctly public purpose. Their photography, paintings, and sculptures remain significant exemplars of federal art patronage and offer telling lessons positioned at the intersection of community history and culture. Art is a powerful instrument of historical record and cultural construction, and many of the issues captured by the Farm Security Administration photographers remain significant issues today: migratory labor, the economic volatility of the mining industry, tourism, and water usage. Art tells important stories, too, including the work of Japanese American photographer Toyo Miyatake in Arizona's internment camps, murals by Native American artist Gerald Nailor for the Navajo Nation Council Chamber in Window Rock, and African American themes at Fort Huachuca. Illustrated with 100 black-andwhite photographs and covering a wide range of both media and themes, this fascinating and accessible volume reclaims a richly textured story of Arizona history with potent lessons for today.

Who were the First Americans? Where did they come from? When did they get here? Are they the ancestors of modern Native Americans? These questions might seem straightforward, but scientists in competing fields have failed to convince one another with their theories and evidence, much less Native American peoples. The practice of science in its search for the First Americans is a flawed endeavor, Robert V. Davis tells us. His book is an effort to explain why. Most American history textbooks today teach that the First Americans migrated to North America on foot from East Asia over a land bridge during the last ice age, 12,000 to 13,000 years ago. In fact, that theory hardly represents the scientific consensus, and it has never won many Native adherents. In many ways, attempts to identify the first Americans embody the conflicts in American society between accepting the practical usefulness of science and honoring cultural values. Davis explores how the contested definition of "First Americans" reflects the unsettled status of Native traditional knowledge, scientific theories, research methodologies, and public policy as they vie with one another for legitimacy in modern America. In this light he considers the traditional beliefs of Native Americans about their origins; the struggle for primacy--or even recognition as science--between the disciplines of anthropology and archaeology; and the mediating, interacting, and sometimes opposing influences of external authorities such as government agencies, universities, museums, and the press. Fossil remains from Mesa Verde, Clovis, and other sites testify to the presence of First Americans. What remains unsettled, as The Search for the First Americans makes clear, is not only who these people were, where they came from, and when, but also the very nature and practice of the science searching for answers.  

Boarding School Voices is both an anthology of mostly unpublished writing by former students of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School and a study of that writing. The boarding schools' ethnocidal practices have become a metaphor for the worst evils of colonialism, a specifiable source for the ills that beset Native communities today. But the fuller story is one not only of suffering and pain, loss and abjection, but also of ingenious agency, creative syntheses, and unimagined adaptations. Although tragic for many students, for others the Carlisle experience led to positive outcomes in their lives. Some published short pieces in the Carlisle newspapers and others sent letters and photos to the school over the years. Arnold Krupat transcribes selections from the letters of these former students literally and unedited, emphasizing their evocative language and what they tell of themselves and their home communities, and the perspectives they offer on a wider American world. Their sense of themselves and their worldview provide detailed insights into what was abstractly and vaguely referred to as "the Indian question." These former students were the oxymoron Carlisle superintendent Richard Henry Pratt could not imagine and never comprehended: they were Carlisle Indians.  

Gamboa's World examines the changing legal landscape of eighteenth-century Mexico through the lens of the jurist Francisco Xavier de Gamboa (1717-1794). Gamboa was both a representative of legal professionals in the Spanish world and a central protagonist in major legal controversies in Mexico. Of Basque descent, Gamboa rose from an impoverished childhood in Guadalajara to the top of the judicial hierarchy in New Spain. He practiced law in Mexico City in the 1740s, represented Mexican merchants in Madrid in the late 1750s, published an authoritative commentary on mining law in 1761, and served for three decades as an Audiencia magistrate. In 1788 he became the first locally born regent, or chief justice, of the High Court of New Spain. In this important work, Christopher Albi shows how Gamboa's forgotten career path illuminates the evolution of colonial legal culture and how his arguments about law and justice remain relevant today as Mexico debates how to strengthen the rule of law.

A Guide to New Mexico Film Locations offers a "call sheet" to explore many of the Land of Enchantment's most iconic film locales, such as those from Easy Rider or Terminator Salvation. From alpine forests to sand dunes, from spaceports to historic ranches, New Mexico's movie backdrops showcase the most dramatic and stunning parts of the state. Using this book as a guide, cinephiles, movie buffs, tourists, producers, New Mexico locals, and armchair explorers can retrace the steps of silver-screen cowboys, superheroes, aliens, and outlaws. Author Jason Strykowski showcases fifty spectacular destinations in this guide including White Sands National Park, the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad, the Albuquerque Rail Yards, Ski Santa Fe, Carlsbad Caverns National Park, and much, much more. He further gives a glimpse into the many eateries, bars, and hotels where film crews spend their time and offers recommendations for outdoor adventures, indoor shopping, and family-friendly places to play. With plenty of insider tips, this unique guide will inspire readers to experience New Mexico's picturesque film locations beyond the screen. Featured Films Include: The Grapes of Wrath Easy Rider Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade Cowboys & Aliens Terminator Salvation Thor Wild Hogs Crazy Heart Lone Survivor Natural Born Killers Contact The Men Who Stare at Goats and more . . .

In Indigenous Cities Laura M. Furlan demonstrates that stories of the urban experience are essential to an understanding of modern Indigeneity. She situates Native identity among theories of diaspora, cosmopolitanism, and transnationalism by examining urban narratives--such as those written by Sherman Alexie, Janet Campbell Hale, Louise Erdrich, and Susan Power--along with the work of filmmakers and artists. In these stories Native peoples navigate new surroundings, find and reformulate community, and maintain and redefine Indian identity in the postrelocation era. These narratives illuminate the changing relationship between urban Indigenous peoples and their tribal nations and territories and the ways in which new cosmopolitan bonds both reshape and are interpreted by tribal identities. Though the majority of American Indigenous populations do not reside on reservations, these spaces regularly define discussions and literature about Native citizenship and identity. Meanwhile, conversations about the shift to urban settings often focus on elements of dispossession, subjectivity, and assimilation. Furlan takes a critical look at Indigenous fiction from the last three decades to present a new way of looking at urban experiences, one that explains mobility and relocation as a form of resistance. In these stories Indian bodies are not bound by state-imposed borders or confined to Indian Country as it is traditionally conceived. Furlan demonstrates that cities have always been Indian land and Indigenous peoples have always been cosmopolitan and urban.  

Veteran journalist and author Sherry Robinson presents readers with the first full biography of New Mexico's first territorial governor, James Silas Calhoun. Robinson explores Calhoun's early life in Georgia and his military service in the Mexican War and how they led him west. Through exhaustive research Robinson shares Calhoun's story of arriving in New Mexico in 1849--a turbulent time in the region--to serve as its first Indian agent. Inhabitants were struggling to determine where their allegiances lay; they had historic and cultural ties with Mexico, but the United States offered an abundance of possibilities. An accomplished attorney, judge, legislator, and businessman and an experienced speaker and negotiator who spoke Spanish, Calhoun was uniquely qualified to serve as the first territorial governor only eighteen months into his service. While his time on the New Mexico political scene was brief, he served with passion, intelligence, and goodwill, making him one of the most intriguing political figures in the history of New Mexico.

James L. Breese was the flight engineer on the first transatlantic flight in 1919 and then developed 130 patents for home and military space heaters. Dismissing a high society Long Island life, Jim moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1929 to start fresh in the unencumbered west. There he built his oil burner business with sales in the millions of dollars. His marriages, however, presented challenges that were hard to overcome.

Destiny Strikes Twice is told with the insight of an inventor in the Breese family who interviewed family members, friends, and employees. The twists and turns through his adventure-packed life reveal lessons for everyone including many insights for aspiring inventors and entrepreneurs. Many illustrations are from unpublished family collections.

Imagine a group of settlers arriving in an undeveloped location. First come shelters in which to live and then structures in which to work and shop. There are buildings for worship and education. As the community grows government buildings are required. With prosperity comes places in which to spend leisure time. And each step along the way builds a story unique to New Mexico. That story is all around you in the work of those who came before you. In these pages you’ll learn the explanations behind the quirks, the traditions and the secrets that make New Mexico uniquely New Mexico. How did Chaves County end up with the state’s best Beaux Arts building? Solved. Where to find the largest collection of National Park Service “parkitecture”? Mystery solved. The building that received the most government money during the Great Depression? Identified. America’s only school built as a bomb shelter? Revealed. Roadside architecture…iconic art…Ernie Pyle…historic stages…Ben Hur…Carnegie libraries…The Mother Road…boomtowns…Pancho Villa…iron horses…Buffalo Soldiers…five and dimes…Harvey Houses…early aviation…Henry Trost…Confederate dreams…the atomic bomb…chiles…water…the golden age of motoring…the Civilian Conservation Corps…Billy the Kid…quarter horses…This book will have you telling stories like a native in no time. Almost all of the selections within are open to the public, or at least visible from public spaces. So, if you haven’t seen these landmarks in person, fire up your GPS and get out and see the story of the Land of Enchantment standing in plain sight on New Mexico streets!

When one thinks of Spanish Colonial art in the Southwest it is usually of New Mexico and the famous Spanish Market of Santa Fe. But New Mexico isn't the only home of Spanish Colonial art and artists in the Southwest. Colorado also has an equally long tradition of these arts. In fact, the only reason we know less about them than those of New Mexico is because of a historical accident-a change of borders. Up until 1861, when the Colorado Territory was established, what is now southern Colorado up to the Arkansas River was actually the New Mexico Territory, and its arts and artists were one and the same. And yet, owing to this change of borders, the Spanish Colonial arts and artists of the modern state of Colorado have not received the same attention as those of New Mexico. To remedy this situation, artist and scholar, Netanel Miles-Yépez, set out to document the life and work of Colorado based santera ('saint-maker'), Teresa May Duran, a native Coloradan who has continued the traditional Spanish Colonial art of retablo making as practiced in the old New Mexico Territory, questioning her about her personal history and training, as well as her methods and subjects. In this work, we are a given a rare glimpse into the motivations and actual techniques of a traditional Spanish Colonial retablo maker of the American SouthwestTeresa Duran is a fifth generation Coloradoan, whose family can be traced to the early settlements of New Mexico. Her work as a santera has shown in various museums, universities, churches and galleries. Her artwork was selected to market the 1994 and 2011 "Chili Harvest Festival" in Denver, Colorado, and the 1997 and 2014, "Colorado Santeros" exhibit at Regis University. She has also won several awards for her retablos through the Tesoro Cultural Center. In 2010, Teresa was juried into the Spanish Market in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her artwork may be seen at teresamayduran.com.

Returning Home features and contextualizes the creative works of Diné (Navajo) boarding school students at the Intermountain Indian School, which was the largest federal Indian boarding school between 1950 and 1984. Diné student art and poetry reveal ways that boarding school students sustained and contributed to Indigenous cultures and communities despite assimilationist agendas and pressures. This book works to recover the lived experiences of Native American boarding school students through creative works, student interviews, and scholarly collaboration. It shows the complex agency and ability of Indigenous youth to maintain their Diné culture within the colonial spaces that were designed to alienate them from their communities and customs. Returning Home provides a view into the students' experiences and their connections to Diné community and land. Despite the initial Intermountain Indian School agenda to send Diné students away and permanently relocate them elsewhere, Diné student artists and writers returned home through their creative works by evoking senses of Diné Bikéyah and the kinship that defined home for them. Returning Home uses archival materials housed at Utah State University, as well as material donated by surviving Intermountain Indian School students and teachers throughout Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. Artwork, poems, and other creative materials show a longing for cultural connection and demonstrate cultural resilience. This work was shared with surviving Intermountain Indian School students and their communities in and around the Navajo Nation in the form of a traveling museum exhibit, and now it is available in this thoughtfully crafted volume. By bringing together the archived student arts and writings with the voices of living communities, Returning Home traces, recontextualizes, reconnects, and returns the embodiment and perpetuation of Intermountain Indian School students' everyday acts of resurgence.

An unflinching examination of the moral and professional dilemmas faced by physicians who took part in the Manhattan Project. After his father died, James L. Nolan, Jr., took possession of a box of private family materials. To his surprise, the small secret archive contained a treasure trove of information about his grandfather's role as a doctor in the Manhattan Project. Dr. Nolan, it turned out, had been a significant figure. A talented ob-gyn radiologist, he cared for the scientists on the project, organized safety and evacuation plans for the Trinity test at Alamogordo, escorted the "Little Boy" bomb from Los Alamos to the Pacific Islands, and was one of the first Americans to enter the irradiated ruins of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Participation on the project challenged Dr. Nolan's instincts as a healer. He and his medical colleagues were often conflicted, torn between their duty and desire to win the war and their oaths to protect life. Atomic Doctors follows these physicians as they sought to maximize the health and safety of those exposed to nuclear radiation, all the while serving leaders determined to minimize delays and maintain secrecy. Called upon both to guard against the harmful effects of radiation and to downplay its hazards, doctors struggled with the ethics of ending the deadliest of all wars using the most lethal of all weapons. Their work became a very human drama of ideals, co-optation, and complicity. A vital and vivid account of a largely unknown chapter in atomic history, Atomic Doctors is a profound meditation on the moral dilemmas that ordinary people face in extraordinary times.

A historical biography of a radical relationship at the dawn of the 20th Century The opening years of the twentieth century saw a grand cast of radicals and reformers fighting for a new America, seeking change not only in labor picket lines and at women's suffrage rallies but also in homes and bedrooms. In the thick of this heady milieu were Sara Bard Field and Charles Erskine Scott Wood, two aspiring poets whose love story uncovers a potent emotional world underneath this transformative time. Self-declared pioneers in free love, Sara and Erskine exchanged hundreds of letters that charted a new kind of romantic relationship, and their personal pursuits frequently came into contact with their deeply engaged political lives. As Sara's star rose in the suffrage movement, culminating in her making a cross-country car trip in 1915 and gathering hundreds of thousands of signatures for a petition to Congress, she began to ask questions about her own power in her relationship with Erskine. Charting a passionate and tumultuous relationship that spanned decades, Bohemians West offers a deeply personal look at a dynamic period in American history.

This pathbreaking book documents the transformation of reproductive practices and politics on Indian reservations from the late nineteenth century to the present, integrating a localized history of childbearing, motherhood, and activism on the Crow Reservation in Montana with an analysis of trends affecting Indigenous women more broadly. As Brianna Theobald illustrates, the federal government and local authorities have long sought to control Indigenous families and women's reproduction, using tactics such as coercive sterilization and removal of Indigenous children into the white foster care system. But Theobald examines women's resistance, showing how they have worked within families, tribal networks, and activist groups to confront these issues. Blending local and intimate family histories with the histories of broader movements such as WARN (Women of All Red Nations), Theobald links the federal government's intrusion into Indigenous women's reproductive and familial decisions to the wider history of eugenics and the reproductive rights movement. She argues convincingly that colonial politics have always been--and remain--reproductive politics. By looking deeply at one tribal nation over more than a century, Theobald offers an especially rich analysis of how Indigenous women experienced pregnancy and motherhood under evolving federal Indian policy. At the heart of this history are the Crow women who displayed creativity and fortitude in struggling for reproductive self-determination.

Inspired by the fiftieth anniversary of the University of Utah's American West Center, the oldest regional studies center in the United States, Western Lands, Western Voices explores the many dimensions of public history. This collection of thirteen essays is rooted in the real-world experiences of the authors and is the first volume to focus specifically on regional public history.  Contributors include tribal government officials, state and federal historians, independent scholars and historical consultants, and academics. Some are distinguished historians of the American West and others are emerging voices that will shape publicly engaged scholarship in the years to come. Among the issues they address are community history and public interpretation, tribal sovereignty, and the importance of historical research for land management. The volume will be indispensable to researchers and general readers interested in museum studies, Native American studies, and public lands history and policy.

Native American Rhetoric is the first book to explore rhetorical traditions from within individual Native communities and Native languages. The essays set a new standard for how rhetoric is talked about, written about, and taught. The contributors argue that Native rhetorical practices have their own interior logic, which is grounded in the morality and religion of their given traditions. Once we understand the ways in which Native rhetorical practices are rooted in culture and tradition, the phenomenological expression of the speech patterns becomes clear. The value of Native communities and their languages is underlined throughout the essays. Lawrence W. Gross and the contributors successfully represent several, but not all, Native communities across the United States and Mexico, including the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe, Choctaw, Nahua, Chickasaw and Chicana, Tohono O'odham, Navajo, Apache, Hupa, Lower Coast Salish, Koyukon, Tlingit, and Nez Perce. Native American Rhetoric will be an essential resource for continued discussions of Native American rhetorical practices in and beyond the discipline of rhetoric.

Lawman or outlaw? Black-hatted "villains" and white-hatted "good guys" of the Old West walk the streets of our imagination. Hollywood draws a convenient line in the Western dirt, differentiating between the two. But in reality, at times it was difficult, if not impossible to distinguish who was who. Shadowy faces roamed the West. When Outlaws Wore Badges explores the world of lawman and outlaw wrapped into one person. At times the badge speaks, other times--the gun. Living in the Old West was not easy. Often, law and justice were left behind in the east, when men migrated to the open lands of the West. Some men took advantage of fluid regulations while others found themselves helping to invent and enforce law and order. A few men did both.

An Irish Rebel in New Spain recounts the story of the so-called Irish Zorro, who, in 1659, was burned at the stake for conspiring against the empire to make himself king of Mexico, restore the privileges of the Indigenous people, end the persecution of the Jews, and free the African slaves. William Lamport was an Irish rebel, a soldier, a poet, and a thinker. His Catholic family lost their land and their religious freedom after the English conquest of Ireland. In 1640, Lamport emigrated to New Spain, where he witnessed the abuses of the colonial system and later ran afoul of the Mexican Inquisition. Imprisoned in 1642, Lamport argued his own defense as well as that of the Jews who were in prison with him. Along with a concise biography, this volume provides an anthology of Lamport's most representative writings: his detailed project for a Spanish-supported Irish insurrection; a manifesto and plan for a Mexican uprising against Spain; his self-defense, which he nailed to the doors of the cathedral when he managed to momentarily escape from prison; a selection of his poetry; and the court documents about the accusation that led him to the pyre. This concise, compelling, and original reflection on the systems of (in)justice in seventeenth-century Mexico is designed for classes on early modern Spain, colonial Latin America, and the Inquisition. Those with an affinity for Irish history will also enjoy learning about the colorful life of William Lamport.

"This novella of becoming traces the growth of a young bi-racial womans struggles in life and love, marriage and motherhood as she leaves the home she must leave only to be drawn back by the forces of destiny"--

El feliz ingenio neomexicano is a bilingual recovery edition of Obras de Felipe Maximiliano Chacón, el Cantor Neomexicano: Poesía y prosa, the first collection of poetry published by a Mexican American author. Journalist and author Felipe M. Chacón, part of a distinguished and active family of nuevomexicano authors, published the book in 1924. El feliz ingenio neomexicano (that "inspired New Mexican wit") reestablishes Chacón's work and his reputation by making the text widely available to readers for the first time in nearly a century. With Nogar and Meléndez's excellent translation of the text, this bilingual volume offers access to both English and Spanish editions for scholars and students from a variety of disciplines. Additionally, the in-depth introduction and appendix materials gathered by the editors place Chacón's book in the context of the time in which it was printed, offering a unique insight into the work. A welcome volume for scholars and literature lovers alike, El feliz ingenio neomexicano is a groundbreaking work of literary recuperation.

Chicago: home to urban Indians and immigrants and working folks and the whole gamut of people getting by in a world that doesn't care whether they do so or not. Sacred City is an incomparable follow-up to Van Alst's award-winning debut collection, Sacred Smokes. Our young narrator now heads deeper into the heart of the city and himself, accompanied by ancestors and spirits who help him and the reader see that Chicago was, is, and always will be Indian Country. Part love song and part lament, Sacred City explores what options are available to an intelligent, smart-assed young man who was born poor and grew up in a gang. Van Alst's skillful storytelling takes us on a journey where Chicago will never seem the same.

"Dazzling...A hard-won love letter to readers and to booksellers, as well as a compelling story about how we cope with pain and fear, injustice and illness. One good way is to press a beloved book into another's hands. Read The Sentence and then do just that." (USA Today, Four Stars) In this New York Times bestselling novel, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich creates a wickedly funny ghost story, a tale of passion, of a complex marriage, and of a woman's relentless errors. Louise Erdrich's latest novel, The Sentence, asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the reader and to the book. A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store's most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls' Day, but she simply won't leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading "with murderous attention," must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning. The Sentence begins on All Souls' Day 2019 and ends on All Souls' Day 2020. Its mystery and proliferating ghost stories during this one year propel a narrative as rich, emotional, and profound as anything Louise Erdrich has written. 

Longlisted for the 2022 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection Set in the western sagebrush steppe, Site Fidelity is a vivid, intimate, and deeply human exploration of life on the shifting terrain of our changing planet. Firmly rooted in the modern American West, Site Fidelity follows women and families who feel the instinctual, inexplicable pull of a home they must work to protect from the effects of economic inequity and climate catastrophe. A seventy-four-year-old nun turns to eco-sabotage to stop a fracking project. A woman delivers her own baby in a Nevada ghost town. A young farmer hides her chicken flock from the government during a bird flu epidemic. An ornithologist returns home to care for her rancher father and gets caught up trying to protect a breeding group of endangered Gunnison sage grouse. In lean, lyrical prose, Claire Boyles evokes the bleakness and beauty of our threatened western landscapes. Spanning the decades from the 1970s to a plausible near future, this knockout debut introduces unforgettable characters who must confront the challenges of caregiving and loss alongside the very practical impacts of fracking, water rights law, and other agricultural policies. Site Fidelity is a vivid, intimate, and deeply human exploration of life on the shifting terrain of our changing planet.

Michael Seymour lived a charmed life-a wealthy, good looking young man who took for granted his status as a popular star athlete, top student and beloved son. Then it all came crashing down. A champion runner, Michael is in college, preparing for a big race, when he finds himself distracted, unable to focus, and then, mid-race he passes out. Not only does Michael lose the race, but he discovers the reason for his fall-unbelievably he has a rare and incurable disease. Devastated by the news, he seeks to forget everything, at least for one night, and drags his best friend Mark out with him to drown his sorrows, only to have the evening end in tragedy when Mark is killed. But for Michael, this is just the beginning of a long and fantastic journey of self-discovery and redemption.

The Forgotten Botanist is the account of an extraordinary woman who, in 1870, was driven by ill health to leave the East Coast for a new life in the West--alone. At thirty-three, Sara Plummer relocated to Santa Barbara, where she taught herself botany and established the town's first library. Ten years later she married botanist John Gill Lemmon, and together the two discovered hundreds of new plant species, many of them illustrated by Sara, an accomplished artist. Although she became an acknowledged botanical expert and lecturer, Sara's considerable contributions to scientific knowledge were credited merely as "J.G. Lemmon & wife." The Forgotten Botanist chronicles Sara's remarkable life, in which she and JG found new plant species in Arizona, California, Oregon, and Mexico and traveled throughout the Southwest with such friends as John Muir and Clara Barton. Sara also found time to work as a journalist and as an activist in women's suffrage and forest conservation. The Forgotten Botanist is a timeless tale about a woman who discovered who she was by leaving everything behind. Her inspiring story is one of resilience, determination, and courage--and is as relevant to our nation today as it was in her own time.  

Water has always been one of the American West's most precious and limited resources. The earliest inhabitants--Native Americans and later Hispanics--learned to share the region's scant rainfall and snowmelt. When Euro-Americans arrived in the middle of the nineteenth century, they brought with them not only an interest in large-scale commercial agriculture but also new practices and laws about access to, and control of, the water essential for their survival and success. This included the concept of private rights to water, a critical resource that had previously been regarded as a communal asset. David Stiller's thoughtful study focuses on the history of agricultural water use of the Rio Grande in Colorado's San Luis Valley. After surveying the practices of early farmers in the region, he focuses on the impacts of Euro-American settlement and the ways these new agrarians endeavored to control the river. Using the Rio Grande as a case study, Stiller offers an informed and accessible history of the development of practices and technologies to store, distribute, and exploit water in Colorado and other western states, as well as an account of the creation of water rights and laws that govern this essential commodity throughout the West to this day. Stiller's work ranges from meticulously monitored fields of irrigated alfalfa and potatoes to the local and state water agencies and halls of Congress. He also includes perceptive comments on the future of western water as these arid states become increasingly urbanized during a period of worsening drought and climate change. An excellent read for anyone curious about important issues in the West, Water and Agriculture in Colorado and the American West offers a succinct summary and analysis of Colorado's use of water by agricultural interests, in addition to a valuable discussion of the past, present, and future of struggles over this necessary and endangered resource.

A Planetary Lens delves into the history of the photo-book, the materiality of the photographic image on the page, and the cultural significance of landscape to reassess the value of print, to locate the sites where stories resonate, and to listen to western women's voices. From foundational California photographers Anne Brigman and Alma Lavenson to contemporary Native poets and writers Leslie Marmon Silko and Joy Harjo, women artists have used photographs to generate stories and to map routes across time and place. A Planetary Lens illuminates the richness and theoretical sophistication of such composite texts. Looking beyond the ideologies of wilderness, migration, and progress that have shaped settler and popular conceptions of the region, A Planetary Lens shows how many artists gather and assemble images and texts to reimagine landscape, identity, and history in the U.S. West. Based on extensive research into the production, publication, and circulation of women's photo-texts, A Planetary Lens offers a fresh perspective on the entangled and gendered histories of western American photography and literature and new models for envisioning regional relations.  

When one thinks of Spanish Colonial art in the Southwest it is usually of New Mexico and the famous Spanish Market of Santa Fe. But New Mexico isn't the only home of Spanish Colonial art and artists in the Southwest. Colorado also has an equally long tradition of these arts. In fact, the only reason we know less about them than those of New Mexico is because of a historical accident-a change of borders. Up until 1861, when the Colorado Territory was established, what is now southern Colorado up to the Arkansas River was actually the New Mexico Territory, and its arts and artists were one and the same. And yet, owing to this change of borders, the Spanish Colonial arts and artists of the modern state of Colorado have not received the same attention as those of New Mexico. To remedy this situation, artist and scholar, Netanel Miles-Yépez, set out to document the life and work of Colorado based santera ('saint-maker'), Teresa May Duran, a native Coloradan who has continued the traditional Spanish Colonial art of retablo making as practiced in the old New Mexico Territory, questioning her about her personal history and training, as well as her methods and subjects. In this work, we are a given a rare glimpse into the motivations and actual techniques of a traditional Spanish Colonial retablo maker of the American SouthwestTeresa Duran is a fifth generation Coloradoan, whose family can be traced to the early settlements of New Mexico. Her work as a santera has shown in various museums, universities, churches and galleries. Her artwork was selected to market the 1994 and 2011 "Chili Harvest Festival" in Denver, Colorado, and the 1997 and 2014, "Colorado Santeros" exhibit at Regis University. She has also won several awards for her retablos through the Tesoro Cultural Center. In 2010, Teresa was juried into the Spanish Market in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her artwork may be seen at teresamayduran.com.

With an artistic career spanning four decades, Virgil Ortiz (Cochiti Pueblo) is one of the most innovative artists working today. Not one to be limited or categorized, Ortiz's artistry extends across mediums and boundaries--challenging societal expectations and breaking taboos. Ortiz was taught traditional pueblo pottery techniques passed down from a matrilineal line of renowned Cochiti potters--grandmother Laurencita Herrera (1912-1984) and mother Seferina Ortiz (1931-2007). Virgil Ortiz: reVOlution is a midcareer retrospective that presents a view into Ortiz's transformative pottery and art to illuminate his creative and artistic manifestations. With a vision that merges apocalyptic themes, science fiction, and storytelling, Ortiz's ingenuity as a contemporary artist, provocateur, activist, futurist, and preservationist extends to his creativity working across media including pottery, design, fashion, film, jewelry, and décor. This beautiful book features more than 200 works of art selected by Virgil Ortiz as well as his artist statement. Curator Karen Kramer contributes a compelling portrait of the artist in the foreword to Charles S. King's biography. In addition, this book represents a unique collaboration between book designer and artist with Ortiz leaving his imprint on each page.

What is American Indian photography? At the turn of the twentieth century, Edward Curtis began creating romantic images of American Indians, and his works--along with pictures by other non-Native photographers--came to define the field. Yet beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century, American Indians themselves started using cameras to record their daily activities and to memorialize tribal members. Through a Native Lens offers a refreshing, new perspective by highlighting the active contributions of North American Indians, both as patrons who commissioned portraits and as photographers who created collections. In this richly illustrated volume, Nicole Dawn Strathman explores how indigenous peoples throughout the United States and Canada appropriated the art of photography and integrated it into their lifeways. The photographs she analyzes date to the first one hundred years of the medium, between 1840 and 1940. To account for Native activity both in front of and behind the camera, the author divides her survey into two parts. Part I focuses on Native participants, including such public figures as Sarah Winnemucca and Red Cloud, who fashioned themselves in deliberate ways for their portraits. Part II examines Native professional, semiprofessional, and amateur photographers. Drawing from tribal and state archives, libraries, museums, and individual collections, Through a Native Lens features photographs--including some never before published--that range from formal portraits to casual snapshots. The images represent multiple tribal communities across Native North America, including the Inland Tlingit, Northern Paiute, and Kiowa. Moving beyond studies of Native Americans as photographic subjects, this groundbreaking book demonstrates how indigenous peoples took control of their own images and distinguished themselves as pioneers of photography.  

Representations of first contact--the first meetings of European explorers and Native Americans--have always had a central place in our nation's historical and visual record. They have also had a key role in shaping and interpreting that record. In Framing First Contact author Kate Elliott looks at paintings by artists from George Catlin to Charles M. Russell and explores what first contact images tell us about the process of constructing national myths--and how those myths acquired different meanings at different points in our nation's history. First contact images, with their focus on beginnings rather than conclusive action or determined outcomes, might depict historical events in a variety of ways. Elliott argues that nineteenth-century artists, responding to the ambiguity and indeterminacy of the subject, used the visualized space between cultures meeting for the first time to address critical contemporary questions and anxieties. Taking works from the 1840s through the 1910s as case studies--paintings by Robert W. Weir, Thomas Moran, and Albert Bierstadt, along with Catlin and Russell--Elliott shows how many first contact representations, especially those commissioned and conceived as official history, speak blatantly of conquest, racial superiority, and imperialism. Yet others communicate more nuanced messages that might surprise contemporary viewers. Elliott suggests it was the very openness of the subject of first contact that allowed artists, consciously or not, to speak of contemporary issues beyond imperialism and conquest. Uncovering those issues, Framing First Contact forces us to think about why we tell the stories we do, and why those stories matter.  

For anyone who wants to make political change, start a campaign, advance a cause or just stay in the fight, former Senator Dede Feldman's memoir, Ten More Doors, charts an inspirational path. Arriving in New Mexico a stranger in 1975, Dede's path to change takes her through alternative newspapers, adobe construction, women's campaigns and heated grassroots politics. Door-to-door, she learns the wisdom of the street in Albuquerque's North Valley, where matanzas and sweathouses reveal an eclectic mix of old and new, Hispanic and Anglo. Once inside the legislature, she takes on the big issues amid conflict and corruption, developing the grit to persist in a long game that lasts beyond the Santa Fe Roundhouse. Dede's honest--and sometimes hilarious--account of neighborhood encounters, wins and losses holds lessons for activists, journalists, aspiring candidates and ordinary citizens on the path to political change. Her memoir--and her life--shows us how the path is never straight, and it calls on all of us to make a difference, starting at ground level, door by door.

In 1955 photographer Charles Eggert and renowned river guide Don Hatch set off down the Green River with six others to duplicate the 1870s journey of John Wesley Powell. With dams soon to be built at Flaming Gorge and Glen Canyon, they planned to film the voyage and be the last to travel these waters before the landscape changed forever. Eggert's film A Canyon Voyage debuted successfully after the trip, but his written narrative of the river, its landscape, its people, and the adventures of the crew was never published. This book finally brings Eggert's writings out of 
the archives and into the public eye. With his keen photographer's vision and colloquial voice, Eggert describes canyons and towns now deep under water
 as he tells the story of friendships forged upon the rapids and currents of the rivers. Roy Webb's foreword provides historical context; river historian Alfred E. Holland Jr. introduces Eggert, the man who transformed into an environmentalist after visiting the West; and Sarah Holcombe's afterword looks at what transpired 
in the lives of all eight crew members after the journey. Color and black-and-white illustrations further enliven the text. An engaging read, this is an important piece of river history that also shines light on Eggert's tremendous influence as a conservation cinematographer.   

A legend in his own lifetime, John Hance (1837-1919) was synonymous with early Grand Canyon tourism. Between the late 1880s and early 1900s, to say "John Hance" was to say "Grand Canyon." Hance was well known to travelers and visiting dignitaries alike, men such as William "Buffalo Bill" Cody and Theodore Roosevelt, the president who affectionately referred to him as "the greatest liar on earth." It was said that Hance tried to jump the canyon on his horse Darby only to turn back when he was halfway over and realized he would never make it across. The truth behind Hance's life is remarkable even without embellishment. In this book, Shane Murphy chronicles Hance's childhood in Tennessee and Missouri, his service in the Confederacy during the Civil War, his time in Union prisons as a POW, and his later adventures with the Hickok brothers crossing the plains. Settling in Arizona's fruitful Verde Valley, Hance farmed and filled military contracts before taking up residence as Grand Canyon's first permanent Euro-American settler, trail builder, guide, and renowned storyteller. Hance left no correspondence, personal memoirs, or other writings. Only informal portraits from magazines and newspaper accounts remain. Murphy investigated assessors' rolls, rare mercantile ledgers, and mining claims to create a full and compelling narrative of a man who was once an icon of the American West and should be remembered as the founding father of Grand Canyon tourism.