Cloverdale lies nestled among forested hills and colorful vineyards at the north end of Sonoma County�s famed Alexander Valley. Originally inhabited by the Makahmo Pomo with white settlers beginning to arrive in the 1850s, the town later became known as �The Orange City� because of its flourishing groves of citrus. In the latter years of the 19th century, Cloverdale welcomed trainloads of visitors arriving to enjoy its signature event, the annual Citrus Fair, to relax at Russian River reso...

National Book Award Finalist: A "beautifully written, deeply felt" memoir about growing up in the American West ( Los Angeles Times).Ivan Doig grew up in the rugged wilderness of western Montana among the sheepherders and denizens of small-town saloons and valley ranches. What he deciphers from his past with piercing clarity is not only a raw sense of land and how it shapes us, but also of the ties to our mothers and fathers, to those who love us, and our ...

One of the most important first-hand account of the Indian Wars you'll ever read. Captain John Gregory Bourke's classic volume on his time as aide-de-camp to General George Crook has been considered essential reading since it was published in 1891. This edition is updated with biographical information on Bourke and annotated with updated notes.Crook and Bourke were at the center of enormous change in the American West. Both of them were distinguished Civil War veterans and both bel...

In the spring of 1931, in a rugged desert canyon on the Arizona-Nevada border, an army of workmen began one of the most difficult and daring building projects ever undertaken—the construction of Hoover Dam. Through the worst years of the Great Depression as many as five thousand laborers toiled twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, to erect the huge structure that would harness the Colorado River and transform the American West.Construction of the giant dam was a triumph of h...

California here we come! Uncle John is taking a full-color plunge into the land of freeways, fun in the sun, cable cars, and movie stars.From the redwood forest to the Mexican border, the Pacific coastline to the Mojave Desert, California is the most populous state in the Union and the eighth-largest economy in the world. And what better way to honor America’s most influential state than by devoting an entire Technicolor compendium to the cause? Inside this book, r...

During the 1930s in the United States, the Works Progress Administration developed the Federal Writers’ Project to support writers and artists while making a national effort to document the country’s shared history and culture. The American Guide series consists of individual guides to each of the states. Little-known authors-many of whom would later become celebrated literary figures-were commissioned to write these important books. John Steinbeck, Saul Bellow, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ral...

Port Town: How the People of Long Beach Built, Defended, and Profited from Their Harbor, tells how the Port of Long Beach rose from a marshy mud flat to become an economic powerhouse, one of the greenest and most modern ports in the world. An epic tale, Port Town is filled with the true stories of the larger-than-life soldiers of fortune, land-grabbers, lovers, dreamers and builders who were inspired and bewitched by the Port of Long Beach's mighty promise.New edition includes biog...

John Butterfield's mail service connected the East and West Coasts in one of the great entrepreneurial and pioneering stories of the American West. Until 1858, California's gold fields were reached only by horseback, wagon or ship around Cape Horn. Congress decided a 2,800-mile, twenty-five-day stagecoach line would roll from St. Louis to San Francisco. Former Utica, New York mayor Butterfield hired one thousand men and bought 1,200 horses, 600 mules and 250 wagons. Surveying the wildernes...

U.S. suburbs are typically imagined to be predominantly white communities, but this is increasingly untrue in many parts of the country. Examining a multiracial suburb that is decidedly nonwhite, Wendy Cheng unpacks questions of how identity—especially racial identity—is shaped by place. She offers an in-depth portrait, enriched by nearly seventy interviews, of the San Gabriel Valley, not far from downtown Los Angeles, where approximately 60 percent of residents are Asian American and more...

In 1863, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors passed a law that criminalized appearing in public in “a dress not belonging to his or her sex.” Adopted as part of a broader anti-indecency campaign, the cross-dressing law became a flexible tool for policing multiple gender transgressions, facilitating over one hundred arrests before the century’s end. Over forty U.S. cities passed similar laws during this time, yet little is known about their emergence, operations, or effects. Grounded in a ...

Winner: John Burroughs MedalLong ago we invited bears into our stories, our dreams, our nightmares, our lives. We have always sought them out where they live, for their hides, their meat, their beauty, their knowingness. Human country and bear country exist side by side.As Sherry Simpson suggests, the relationship between bears and humans is ancient and ongoing and, in Alaska, profoundly and often uncomfortably close. A huge number of North America...

Here is an entertaining collection of famed conservationist John Muir’s most exciting adventures in nature, representing some of his finest writing. From the famous avalanche ride off the rim of Yosemite Valley to his night spent weathering a windstorm at the top of a tree to death-defying falls on Alaskan glaciers, the renowned outdoorsman’s exploits are related in passages that are by turns exhilarating, unnerving, dizzying, and outrageous.