Nevada Books

This book is another great entry in the Midnight Louie series, giving us the back story on Darcy McGill and Steven Austin. I really enjoy finding out about the characters before we got to know them in the other Midnight Louie "The cat and the..." books. If only I didn't have to wait until June to find out what happens next...

I'm glad they these books are now in print, as they give the series an added dimension.

Written by John C. Putman (associate professor of history, San Diego State University), Class and Gender Politics in Progressive-Era Seattle is a scholarly look at he changing social order in early twentieth century Seattle. Examining the intersection of radical-labor movements, feminist movements, suffrage campaigns, Class and Gender Politics in Progressive-Era Seattle reveals how the alliances and conflicts between these movements contributed to Seattle's regional identity. "Unlike most eastern labor struggles, class conflict out west was more localized. The lack of large-scale national industrial firms meant that Seattle workers had to battle locally entrenched economic and political elites rather than national corporate leaders." An astute socio-historical analysis, particularly recommended for college library collections.

Just finished reading The Coast Starlight, a collection of poetry by Hans Ostrom, who is the chair of the English Department at the University of Puget Sound. This is Ostrom's twelfth book. His previous works include the novel Three to Get Ready, Subjects Apprehended, which is another collection of poetry, and Metro: Journeys in Writing Creatively, an acclaimed, multi-genre bible of writing guides and prompts.

The Coast Starlight contains a total of 156 poems. I enjoyed reading them very much. Ostrom's poetry is observant and thoughtful. "Tacoma Blues" captures the funky atmosphere around Tacoma, Washington. Rain comes down constantly. Birds wear miners' lamps. Rich people visit just to laugh at you. Your relatives drive through without stopping. "Hick" is a character study of a man who eats too fast, walks too slowly, hangs on to old things, and watches the entitled with an inexplicable fascination. There is a large presence of nature throughout the collection, too. Poems like "Hurricane Season," "Tornado in the Pennsylvania Hills," and "Fox and You" deal with the relationship between nature and humans (among other things, nature keeps an encyclopedia on you, as revealed in the last poem of that list).

The poetry is also imaginative. Emily Dickinson meets Elvis Presley in Heaven in one poem. They get along just fine. Emily teaches Elvis about half rhymes. Elvis puts Emily's poems to song. Also paired in Heaven (in other poems): Jack Benny and T.S. Eliot, Charles Baudelaire and Richard Brautigan, Sigmund Freud and Babe Ruth...Freud watches Babe [...], and gets discontented whenever Babe breaks wind and belches. Other food for the imagination: poems like "Career," which throws a twist in the saying, "He worked at a company for years." And "Whereabouts Unknown," in which Einstein's theory of relativity becomes key in defining the narrator's relationships.

Finally, the poems are often full of wit and humor. The premise of "Peaceheads:" powers in the world have started an arms race collecting, well, peaceheads, and the threat of worldwide peace grows larger by the day. "Permission to Treat the Witness as Hostile" contains a very logical linguistic argument about why the narrator can't tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but. And "Social Interaction" gives a very good reason as to why you should sometimes turn around and say hello to that stranger walking behind you.

The Coast Starlight reminds me of a friend I had in middle school, named Zac. I remember Zac because he was a heck of a lot more observant than me (Ever notice how Mr M----- just swings his knees directly into the opening underneath his desk whenever he sits down?), had a much more active imagination (I wonder what would happen if we flipped his desk around?), and had a great sense of humor, to boot (Let's do it!). I enjoyed stuff like that. Liked hanging around him. Liked the times I spent with him. Same goes for Ostrom's book.

This is the very best book as a resource book on the Comstock Lode. It has the advantage of 100 years of history, the ability to amass all of the figures on such things as dividends, tons of material, freight.

It also hs the advantage of knowing what happened to the leading characters of the Comstock.

No student of the Comstock should be without this book.

This is a great book for looking at Las Vegas restaurants. It covers famous restaurants of various styles from numerous Las Vegas casinos. It includes both detailed photos and recipes from high-caliber chefs. If you are a Vegas or restaurant fan, buy it.

I have almost every copy of Coop's Maps and I just love them! They're informative, easy to follow, and I love their look. I've given them to friends as gifts, too, & they're always a hit. I use these maps for travel, I also just like having them around for fun.

Very interesting book about a cattle drive, a boy and his friends. Very descriptive without being boring. A good story for any boy. My sons, ages 6, 9, and l4 have read, or been read to, the entire series. It has some parts where Nathan gets into trouble and has to figure his way out. There are gun slingers and fights. Nothing dirty. He does call upon God to help him. Any boy Christian or not would enjoy this book. Very well written, a good story. A boy (or girl) could easily relate to this. It's one of those books I (a mother) looked forward to reading to my sons.

Written by history teacher David Beesley, who served as an associate of the Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project and presented part of its report to Congress, Crow's Range: A Environmental History of the Sierra Nevada is an amazing chronicle of the Sierra Nevada mountain range that stretches across four hundred miles of California and Nevada. Chapters discuss the impact that native people, the gold rush, conservation efforts, and modern ecosystem politics have had upon these majestic mountains throughout history, especially during the mid-1800's to the modern day. An extensively researched history, sporting a wealth of notes, a thorough bibliography, and an index, Crow's Range is an enthusiastically recommended historical resource for lay readers and environmentalists alike.

Carolyn has done a fine job of presenting a fun story of a very interesting man. The book includes some good historical info about Zachary and other bearded men including newspaper advertisements, legal documents and some great photos. Great fun for those with facial hair and those who appreciate the same.

"A Cup of Tea in Pamplona" actually has nothing to do with tea or Pamplona (the city famous for its running of the bulls) and frankly I think Laxalt could have found a better title. The book is a poignant novel about Basque smugglers, set in the 1960s. In his recent book, "The Land of My Fathers", Laxalt lamented the extinction of the "contrabandiers" (as they're known in France) when Spain entered the European Union, regretting that "something of the romantic past has been lost". In this slim and rapid-fire novel, though, Laxalt makes no bones about the ugly, desperate, and sometimes violent world of the "romantic past" of Basque smugglers.

The story revolves around Nikolas, an impoverished Basque with a wife and infant sons who, driven by financial despair and in spite of his wish to live a respectable life, takes on work as a "contrabandier" for Gregorio, the "patrón" of a small team of smugglers. As the narrator comments, Nikolas "[breaks] the pattern in a land where patterns were not made to be broken. If your father was a cobbler, then it followed that you were a cobbler. If your father was a peasant, then you had better remain a peasant, too. If you were born poor, then it was your duty to remain poor." Gregorio argues him out of tradition, though, reminding Nikolas (correctly) that a man cannot feed and clothe his family with "the substance of respectability" and, besides, smuggling "was not like stealing from a neighbor. The only victim was the government, and who had ever felt sorry for a government?"

Gregorio arranges to have Nikolas lead a team of other smugglers (including Luis, Nikolas' brother-in-law) in an effort to smuggle fifty horses over the frontier straddling the ridge of the Pyrenees between France and Spain. If they are caught by the French border guards, they'll spend time in jail, which can mean ruin for a poor man. Worse, if they struggle with the guards, it can mean death on the mountain.

Does the novel end in tragedy or does the team successfully make it over? Laxalt doesn't drop hints beforehand. Neither will I. However it ends, "A Cup of Tea in Pamplona" is a weighty indictment of the grinding poverty that led Basques into smuggling. It offers a good glimpse into social conditions in the Basque Country, and though it isn't an "ethnic" novel or "quaint" in any way, you'll come away knowing something about customs and social relations in the Basque Country forty years ago. Additionally, Laxalt has an ear for terse narration and realistic dialogue free of clichés, plus the ability to weave a intense, continually engrossing plot.

I'm thinking about travelling in the Pyrenees next spring and found this book a great way to get a feel for the place. And having read Laxalt before, I can also say that I'll definitely read him again. A+ and 5 stars.