“A fascinating narrative with all the grace and power embodied in the wild horses that once populated the Western range . . . [A] magnificently told saga.” —Albuquerque Journal A Los Angeles Times Best Nonfiction Book of the Year Mustang is the sweeping story of the wild horse in the culture, history, and popular imagination of the American West. It follows the wild horse across time, from its evolutionary origins on this continent to its return with the conquistadors, its bloody battles on the old frontier, its iconic status in Buffalo Bill shows and early westerns, and its plight today as it makes its last stand on the vanishing range. With the Bureau of Land Management proposing to euthanize thousands of horses and ever-encroaching development threatening the land, the mustang’s position has never been more perilous. But as Stillman reveals, the horses are still running wild despite all the obstacles, with spirit unbroken. Hailed by critics nationwide, Mustang is “brisk, smart, thorough, and surprising” (Atlantic Monthly). “Like the best nonfiction writers of our time (Jon Krakauer and Bruce Chatwin come to mind), Stillman’s prose is inviting, her voice authoritative and her vision imaginative and impressively broad.” —Los Angeles Times “Powerful . . . Stillman’s talent as a writer makes this impossible [to stop reading], to the mustang’s benefit.” —Orion “A circumspect writer passionate about her purpose can produce a significant gift for readers. Stillman’s wonderful chronicle of America’s mustangs is an excellent example.” —The Seattle Times
Deanne Williams offers the very first study of the medieval and early modern girl actor. Whereas previous histories of the actress begin with the Restoration, this book demonstrates that the girl is actually a well-documented category of performer and a key participant in the drama of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. It explores evidence of the girl actor in archival records of payment, eyewitness accounts, stage directions, paintings, and in the plays and masques that were explicitly composed for girls, and, in some cases, by them. Contradicting previous scholarly assumptions about the early modern stage as male-dominated, this evidence reveals girls' participation in medieval religious drama, Tudor civic pageants and royal entries, Elizabethan country house entertainments, and Stuart court and household masques. This book situates its historical study of the girl actor within the wider contexts of 'girl culture', including girls as singers, translators and authors. By examining the impact of the girl actor on constructions of girlhood in the work of Shakespeare whose girl characters register and evoke the power of the performing girl Girl Culture in the Middle Ages and Renaissance argues that girls' dramatic, musical and literary performances actively shaped medieval and early modern culture. It shows how the active presence and participation of girls shaped medieval and Renaissance culture, and it reveals how some of its best-known literary and dramatic texts address, represent, and reflect upon girl children, not as an imagined ideal, but as a lived reality.
George Blue Spruce Jr. is recognized as the first American Indian dentist in the United States. His life story reaches back to the ancient Pueblo culture cherished by his grandparents and parents and extends to state-of-the-art dentistry and the current needs of the American Indian people. Blue Spruce’s journey begins on the Santa Fe Indian School campus with his parents’ determination that their children would excel academically and obtain college degrees. After graduating from dental school, Dr. Blue Spruce planned to return to the pueblos to treat his people. As it turned out, his destiny reached far beyond: from the wilds of Montana to New York City to San Francisco to South America and back to the United States. In Washington DC, he presented the needs of American Indians to Congress and lunched with the president. Throughout his journey Dr. Blue Spruce has traveled between two cultures, succeeding in mainstream society while keeping Pueblo tradition in his heart. Facing prejudice and conquering adversity, he reached the zenith of his career as director of the Phoenix Regional Indian Health Service and achieving the rank of assistant surgeon general of the United States.
North of Los Angeles - the studios, the beaches, Rodeo Drive - lies a sparsely populated region that comprises fully one half of Los Angeles County. Sprawling across 2200 miles, this shadow side of Los Angeles is in the high Mojave Desert. Known as the Antelope Valley, it's a terrain of savage dignity, a vast amphitheatre of startling wonders that put on a show as the megalopolis burrows northward into the region's last frontier. Ranchers, cowboys, dreamers, dropouts, bikers, hikers, and felons have settled here - those who have chosen solitude over the trappings of contemporary life or simply have nowhere else to go. But in recent years their lives have been encroached upon by the creeping spread of subdivisions, funded by the once easy money of subprime America. McMansions - many empty now - gradually replaced Joshua trees; the desert - America's escape hatch - began to vanish as it became home to a latter-day exodus of pilgrims. It is against the backdrop of these two competing visions of land and space that Donald Kueck - a desert hermit who loved animals and hated civilization - took his last stand, gunning down beloved deputy sheriff Steven Sorensen when he approached his trailer at high noon on a scorching summer day. As the sound of rifle fire echoed across the Mojave, Kueck took off into the desert he knew so well, kicking off the biggest manhunt in modern California history until he was finally killed in a Wagnerian firestorm under a full moon as nuns at a nearby convent watched and prayed. This manhunt was the subject of a widely praised article by Deanne Stillman, first published in Rolling Stone, a finalist for a PEN Center USA journalism award, and included in the anthology Best American Crime Writing 2006. In Desert Reckoning she continues her desert beat and uses Kueck's story as a point of departure to further explore our relationship to place and the wars that are playing out on our homeland. In addition, Stillman also delves into the hidden history of Los Angeles County, and traces the paths of two men on a collision course that could only end in the modern Wild West. Why did a brilliant, self-taught rocket scientist who just wanted to be left alone go off the rails when a cop showed up? What role did the California prison system play in this drama? What happens to people when the American dream is stripped away? And what is it like for the men who are sworn to protect and serve?
The divas profiled in this compilation have one thing in common: they are all young, powerful African-American women who have made their mark in the recording industry. "Divas of the New Millennium" is an intimate look into the lives of these women who have become today's most influential female musicians by following the music within their hearts.
Discusses the lives and achievements of five famous and influential Native American chiefs: King Philip, Chief Pontiac, Geronimo, Crazy Horse, and Wilma Mankiller.
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