Utah Books

Prior to reading this book, I did not realize that Basques have been such an important ethnic group in America's West. Thursby's book provides a fine overview of Basque settlement in the United States, and she uses this historical context to provide understanding of important forms of folklore in present day Basque cultural expressions. The major portion of the book is an overview of genres and forms of folk culture from areas with large populations of Basques. She provides special attention to the importance of women's contributions to the preservation and adaptation of this ethnic group's folklore, and she concludes her study with a thought-provoking and well presented analysis of the group's traditional culture. Many of her insights are useful for comparing and contrasting Basque traditional culture with the folklore of other ethnic groups in other regions, and Thursby's writing style is accessible and interesting.

Basque Americans are one of the least known ethnic groups in the United States despite a long residence in the western part of the country. _Mother's Table, Father's Chair_ is one of the first studies to discuss Basque American women and their cultural roles within the American Basque culture. Basque sheepherders and others found ethnic communion and support in Basque boarding houses and hotels that were usually run by women. These Basque men who stayed in America often brought over their families, or married women from the old country who then migrated. Many Basque women migrated on their own. As new generations of native Basque Americans were born, women often became the principle carriers and preservers of cultural traditions, as well as primary agents of Americanization, as they sought and encouraged their children to seek the educational and material benefits of the United States. Jacqueline Thursby interviewed Basque American women across the West, observed and participated in cultural activities and events, and did supplemental research in the Basque country of Spain and France in preparation for this seminal overview of the culture of Basque American woemn. Thursby admirably clarifies the role of women in the transformation of Basques into Basque Americans. _Mother's Table, Father's Chair_ will be of immense interest to students of ethnography, basque culture, women's studies, and Western American studies.

This short 30 page account of the D-Day invasion with first hand
narrative is unique in that it contains reproductions of various items associated with the invasion. There are personal items such as notebooks and Bibles and operational items such as orders
and after-action reports. All in all this is an interesting look into the history of D-Day made more so by the inclusion of historical artifacts. I recommend it to you, inspite of its brevity and price.

Despite its brevity, this book is both informative and revealing. Bowden gives a good overview of what preceded and led up to D-Day. He describes Operation Overlord and the German defenses on the French coast, as well as the air and land assault plans.

Especially interesting are the authentic photos and artifacts from the collection of the D-Day Museum in New Orleans, founded by the late Stephen Ambrose. These artifacts include a soldiers' diary, the front page of the New York Times, a letter from Roosevelt, and an inspirational message from Eisenhower. All are able to be pulled out and looked at by the reader.

One of the artifacts, "A Pocket Guide to France" was given to the military and is included in this book as a pull out. It was simple and patriotic as it explained the military mission in France, the history of the conflict, and told the soldiers how to behave while in France.

Bowden also writes of the possible pitfalls in the plan, including dropping soldiers at night and the unpredictability of the weather. He concisely relates the events of D-Day, the airborne efforts, the invasion of Utah Beach, and the action of the armada, all interspersed with the words of those who were there.

Following this is a section about the Allied advance through France and into Germany...and less than a year later, the Reich was in ruins and Hitler was dead.

I liked this book most of all for its simplicity and authenticity.

Faith Shearin's debut book of poems tells a compelling story. The speaker in these poems begins as a child, becomes a childless wife and ,in a final transformation, finds herself a mother. The book is full of humor and wise observation. She describes her yearning for a child this way: "I hold nothing in my arms. The nothing feels light and heavy at the same time.." The stories these poems weave together are both particular and individual (a mother's untidy kitchen, a father's eccentric love for his dog) and wonderfully universal.

Winner of the May Swenson poetry award, The Owl Question by Faith Shearin is a unique collection of brief yet evocative verse, featuring a foreword by Mark Doty (an international poet and the appointed judge for the 2002 May Swenson Award). Examining adolescence, nature, femininity, parenthood, daily life, and more, these inspirational and deftly written verses often carry a down-to-earth, narrative-event tone. My father, in middle age, falls in love with a dog./He who kicked dogs in anger when I was a child,/who liked his comb always on the same shelf,/who drank martinis to make his mind quiet./He who worked and worked/- his shirts/wrapped in plastic, his heart ironed/like a collar./He who - like many men -/ loved his children but thought the money/he made for them was more important/than the rough tweed of his presence.

Environment. Controversial issues for decades, and for decades to come. Ranchers, farmers, oil and gas industries, conservationists, endangered species act, economy, etc. all play major roles in how we should (or to some should not) safeguard our outside world.
Being an advocate of protecting our natural areas, I was greatly informed through these 18 essays on the different modes of thinking and how to reach conformity among such a divisive group of people and customs.
Although a few of the articles were overly academic, the majority of the essays were insightful on management, recreating, preservation, restoration and sustaining landscapes.
As Francis Parkman, author of "The Oregon Trail" said in the 1800's, "The buffalo are gone, and all his millions, nothing is left but bones". The same could be said of our western wild areas if some sort of accordance is not established.
If we continue treating the earth with disrespect for generation after generation, no longer will there be wild places to comfort the soul and spirit in all of us. Flora, fauna, uncommon landforms, historical trails, air, water, sacred Native American sites, etc., too much is at risk here.

Reclaiming the Native Home of Hope delivers a top-notch set of essays and case studies on western ecosystems, species re-introduction, land management, and conservation. The majority of the setting is focused on the Utah wilderness with other stories spiraling out to the Great Basin and Colorado Plateau areas.

The essays challenge the traditional thinking about the best uses for these remote and relatively unpopulated areas (e.g., mining and ranching) and bring the natural qualities to the top of the list. The book's arguments to preserve ecosystems of the west are balanced with constructive thoughts on ways to preserve jobs and private land.

Stephen Trimble sums up the motivation for spending time in open, natural spaces in an essay called "Letting Go of the Rim." The kind of story that would have left Wallace Stegner smiling.

This is a great overview of the Salt Lake Olympics and Salt Lake Valley. If you want one handy reference book with information all in one place, this is your move.

This coffee table book has some absolutely beautiful pictures of Salt Lake City, the Wasatch Mountains and surrounding areas. The photographers did a fantastic job capturing light, and the pictures are extremely well printed. This would be a great book to have on hand while watching the olympics.

It is also a good book for people who want to have a coffee table book about Utah.

The book itself starts with a brief overview of the Salt Lake Bid, and the resulting Olympic bidding scandal. It then takes us on a tour of the geology of Utah and the mountain west. The book includes pictures of both the mountains in Northern Utah, and the Colorado plateau in Southern Utah. It provides a summary of historical and cultural information about the Salt Lake Valley.

In the last quarter of the book, we get into sports photography, and we can see some high quality shoots of skiers and other athletes.

All in all, it is a well made and designed coffee table book. The main reason to buy it is the high quality photography. You will definitely enjoy having it on hand while you watch the Olympics. The book covers a great deal of information, mainly at a summary level; so it really would not serve as a reference book.

Finally, having been written before the Olympics, there are no actual pictures of 2002 Olympic events. My guess is the book was written before 9/11/2001, and there is no mention of the international tensions which will be in everyone's mind during the events.

Bagley is an interesting modern historian. He makes his bias toward Brannan clear in the first few pages and throughout the book (chiefly based on Brannan's part in San Francisco's vigilante movement (My hat is off to Brannan for that episode.)), but it's a bias that the reader can mostly cringe at a little and move on mainly because Bagley has put forth a great effort in piecing together a wide array of primary sources that the reader can interpret without (pre)judgement. Bagley also states that this book is "not for the faint-hearted." I'm unclear on what that means since I found nothing excessively shocking about the man. I was expecting that Brannan was a "womanizer" of dozens of women, but that failed to emerge. Based on his time period Brannan had his faults, but he clearly is the material of a classic American hero like him or not. The only thing I did find disturbing was the fact that the LDS church seems to prohibit, limit, shelf indefinitely or (likely) destroy historical materials it deems threatening in any way to its image; possibly that is what Bagley meant. Maybe it was the fact that Brannan was a clear threat to Brigham Young, and Young knew it. Bagley also does a fine job of separating the real from the mythical Brannan. I felt that I got to know the man a little better when it was revealed that Brannan was charitable, but was blunt toward poor people, and would question them closely, but gave them a generous gift. That made him more human to me even though it was a secondary source. He also survived seven gun shot wounds; he was one tough and lucky man. We should all be so lucky to have a life such as Brannan's. Overall, a readable book.

Sam Brannan is a mythic character. He was on the scene and usually a major player in most of early California history, from the founding of San Francisco and Sacramento to the publicity of and fortunes made from the Gold Rush. Like most larger than life figures, facts about him are hidden within the obscuring mists of legend.

William Bagley has done the heroic task of sifting through literally all available letters to, from, and about Brannan by first person sources. With access to documents previously hidden in the depths of the Salt Lake City archives, Bagley is able to weave a crazy quilt story of an apprentice printer living with Joseph Smith's family who became a brilliant young evangelist who stumped throughout the US in the mid 1800s, and as President of the Saints in the West spearheaded a voyage of saints hoping to establish a Mormon principality on the west coast of America. The fact that in his later years, having made and lost fortunes larger than most will ever see, he claimed never to have been a Mormon at all makes the story even more intriguing.

Bagley's meticulous attention to details, footnotes, and absolutely complete index makes this both a fascinating read and an invaluable reference book. If you want or need to know anything about Sam Brannan, I can think of no better place to start.

This is like "four-winded shaman" part II but instead of one shaman we have 12. Their life-stories are incredible: pacts with the devil, cosmic attacks from other sorcerers ... Plus the patient's point of view is also shown this time. Excellent book.

This is an overall outstanding addition to the English-language book-based (i.e., non-magazine, journal, etc.) literature on Northern Coastal Peruvian curanderismo, and shamanism in general. If you have no exposure to these topics however, things may be a bit too complex or involved. This is not a drawback however-- the book is clearly not meant for the neophyte as much as it is meant for the serious student (or at least, for the voraciously interested), and thus provides a richness and diversity not previously seen or collected all in one place.

While (obviously) not as thorough as Sharon's prior landmark research (Wizard of the Four Winds, about Calderon), the strength in this work is in the numbers. A full dozen healers are at least adequately (and often completely) described and expounded upon. The authors (Sharon, Joralemon, and the more recently doctor-ed Skillman) used their considerable connections and anthropological contacts extremely well.

On the other hand, the interpretation of the collected data is sometimes weak. This is not the fault of the authors, per se, but a certain lack of first-hand experience in traditions of other regions of Peru is discernible. Though perhaps too great a task to ask for, comparison to and ethnohistoric research in other Andean shamanic traditions would be an invaluable next step in taking the immediate findings and raw data of the authors to a larger and more fertile platform. Especially investigating the relations of coastal traditions to their highland and jungle counterparts (which are certainly all inter-connected, both historically and today) would bring a broader understanding to the subject matter.

But, in the end the authors are anthropologists, so I cannot criticize them for remaining within the bounds of their expertise. At the same time, as a more general criticism of and commentary on the state of affairs in this kind of culturally- and spiritually-sensitive anthropology, I do note a tendency to dilute the importance of certain spiritual concepts in favor of highlighting cultural origins and causes. As a participant and student of these traditions myself, I understand the spiritual as being primordial and primary, managing later to adapt itself to the specific cultural necessities of a given time and space. A notable and gratefully received exception to my critique is the well-documented and well-argued discussion of the Tinkuy concept (whose only flaw is is in forgetting Richard Burger's understanding of ancient U-shaped pyramid complexes as manifestations of the same Tinkuy cosmology). More of that kind of analysis can (and Will, I hope) take Sharon to the true elite of a field in which he continues to innovate and intrigue.

Nicolette "Nick" Scott is an 'Historical Archaelogist,' meaning that she likes to dig up the recent past; as opposed to her father who is a "real" archaelogist (Elliott Scott). There's some old family friction going on thanks to Nick's dead mother and Nick's chosen field of study. But when Nick goes to an Anasazi site with her father, and she finds a 1937 Packard convertible in an abandoned building, both her and her father are happy with this site...for a while.

The Packard, it turns out, belonged to two notorious bank robbers of the past named Knute and Nora. But Knute and Nora robbed the wrong bank, a bank that had some top secret documents in it that the government wants to remain hidden now that so many years have passed. Unwittingly, Nick sets into motion a plan to destroy all those who know anything about this old car and the documents it contained.

What ensues is a fast paced, action-filled, sleuth-yarn that will keep you reading into the wee-hours of the night. Will those government killers catch up to Nick, her Dad and her friends? Will the slimey boys get their just dessert? Read and see.

My only issue I had with the book was its ending; it ended rather abruptly (indicating a sequel maybe?). And the fact that a love interest of Nick's was killed right in front of her and there was no emotional response also seemed unlikely. But other than that, this book was a pure joy to read. It'll stay on my shelf to be read again...later.

B+ rating.

Knute and Nora were bank robbers and folk heroes in 1940 Utah until they robbed the wrong bank. Unbeknownst to them, top secret documents were taken along with the cash and the media was told they slaughtered everyone in the bank, which was a lie. They died in a shoot-out after they already surrendered but the documents and the cash was never found.

In July 2001 in Gulch Canyon, Utah, historical archeologist Nick Scott and her father are searching for Anazzi ruins. In one of the caves she finds the top secret documents and realizes the information she has. She can change the way people look at the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, there are people who prefer those papers never see the light of day and will go to any lengths to stop her.

THREAD OF THE SPIDER is a fascinating amateur sleuth tale starring a protagonist one must admire for her tenacity. The plot is fast paced and filled with enough startling revelations to keep reader interest throughout the plot. Val Davis is a natural storyteller who parcels out crucial information one tantalizing piece at a time.

Harriet Klausner

Being an enthusiastic amateur treasure hunter myself, in years past, I diligently read each and every volume of Mr. Terry's exhaustively researched works. Although I found some the information erroneous or far from exact - for instance many locations cited as "ghost towns" are FAR from being one - there are so many intriguing stories of legends, factual evidence & stories of past recoveries that any true TH'r will be enthralled. Treasure hunting is supposedly America's fastest growing hobby: it's uniquely enjoyable for the adventure, historical aspects & healthy outdoor recreation. And when you really find something decent...Boy Howdy!! Not as easy as it sounds, though. To be a professional TH'r, one has to have patience, applying oneself with the perseverance of a detective: because that's what it takes to be successful. Exhaustive research is the key: going where people gathered long ago (old picnic grounds & abandoned schoolyards, for instance) will be beneficial for coin shooters who are after more than modern coins....for me, finding modern coins was a complete waste of time & energy. Going for the gold? Go where it is KNOWN to be & be creative: the better your equipment - i.e. a decent detector which finds gold & common sense makes this a most fascinating hobby. For some, it's a life's career. Good luck!!

Found this to be a very interesting paperback book for anyone dreaming of treasure hunting/finds. But, I wish it was updated. I'm sure there are more interesting things about Florida. Not all of Fla. treasure finds are in the sea as this book notes. Worth reading.Open anywhere and begin reading.

This book caught my eye as I was browsing through travel guides in preparation for my week-long trip through Arizona and Utah. Tired of fighting hordes of tourists from every corner of the globe, I wanted to get the flavor and feel of that part of the country without being hassled by the mobs. Every place I went, from the quirky hotels in Moab to the awe-inspiring day-long treks through Canyonlands, was inspired by the guide. Brewer has a keen eye for the off-kilter, and I hope to follow his slightly beaten path in other parts of the country as well.

We pretty much skipped using the Frommer's guide because the tips from this book were more interesting and more our speed. The author led us to the Frisco ghost town and told the history of the town that the roadside plaque didn't cover. The book is well-written and filled with information to keep you in touch with the true feeling of the state.