Exploring the lives of the wide range of people who struggled to make a home for themselves in this harsh and unforgiving region.Including descriptions of how a variety of people lived their daily lives, from nomadic Indian tribes to Chinese immigrants and from cowboys to city-dwellers. It also conveys how those individual lives are reflected in the sweeping changes that occurred in a century that saw the West become the most modern and diverse of all the nation's ...

The West, especially the Intermountain states, ranks among the whitest places in America, but this fact obscures the more complicated history of racial diversity in the region. In Making the White Man’s West, author Jason E. Pierce argues that since the time of the Louisiana Purchase, the American West has been a racially contested space. Using a nuanced theory of historical “whiteness,” he examines why and how Anglo-Americans dominated the region for a 120-year period.In ...

Numerous archaeological projects have found substantial evidence of the military nature of Maya society, and warfare is a frequent theme of Maya art. Maya Gods of War investigates the Classic period Maya gods who were associated with weapons of war and the flint and obsidian from which those weapons were made.Author Karen Bassie-Sweet traces the semantic markers used to distinguish flint from other types of stone, surveys various types of Chahk thunderbolt deities and thei...

Mixtec Evangelicals is a comparative ethnography of four Mixtec communities in Oaxaca, detailing the process by which economic migration and religious conversion combine to change the social and cultural makeup of predominantly folk-Catholic communities. The book describes the effects on the home communities of the Mixtecs who travel to northern Mexico and the United States in search of wage labor and return having converted from their rural Catholic roots to Evangelical Protestan...

Ancient Maya Commerce presents nearly two decades of multidisciplinary research at Chunchucmil, Yucatan, Mexico—a thriving Classic period Maya center organized around commercial exchange rather than agriculture. An urban center without a king and unable to sustain agrarian independence, Chunchucmil is a rare example of a Maya city in which economics, not political rituals, served as the engine of growth. Trade was the raison d’être of the city itself.Using a variety of evi...

Persephone was born inside a British labour camp. Slavery and death have been her only experiences of life. No friends. No feelings. No knowledge of the world outside. She is conditioned to work, obey, and survive.Yet when she is ordered to spy on a new prisoner, despite the great differences that exist between the two women, they soon forge a surprising friendship which changes everything.As the camp becomes increasingly harsh, Persephone now realises that to save her frie...

Little is known about how Late Postclassic populations in southeast Mesoamerica organized their political relations. Networks of Power fills gaps in the knowledge of this little-studied area, reconstructing the course of political history in the Naco Valley from the fourteenth through early sixteenth centuries.Describing the material and behavioral patterns pertaining to the Late Postclassic period using components of three settlements in the Naco Valley of northwestern Ho...

Transference of orientalist images and identities to the American landscape and its inhabitants, especially in the West—in other words, portrayal of the West as the “Orient”—has been a common aspect of American cultural history. Place names, such as the Jordan River or Pyramid Lake, offer notable examples, but the imagery and its varied meanings are more widespread and significant. Understanding that range and significance, especially to the western part of the continent, means coming to t...

As Americans try to better manage and protect the natural resources of our watersheds, is politics getting in the way? Why does watershed management end up being so political? In Embracing Watershed Politics, political scientists Edella Schlager and William Blomquist provide timely illustrations and thought-provoking explanations of why political considerations are essential, unavoidable, and in some ways even desirable elements of decision making about water and watersheds. With ...

The Valley of Oaxaca was unified under the rule of Monte Albán until its collapse around AD 800. Using findings from John Paddock’s long-term excavations at Lambityeco from 1961 to 1976, Michael Lind and Javier Urcid examine the political and social organization of the ancient community during the Xoo Phase (Late Classic period).Focusing on change within this single archaeological period rather than between time periods, The Lords of Lambityeco traces the changing political relati...

Historical Crime Collection. Two Novels by M. G. Scarsbrook.POISON IN THE BLOOD: THE MEMOIRS OF LUCREZIA BORGIA1497, Renaissance Rome - As the teenage daughter of Pope Alexander VI, and sister to the fearsome Cesare Borgia, Lucrezia is a young noblewoman immersed in all the glamor of the Vatican Palace. Yet after a brutal killing shocks the city, she learns that a dangerous truth lies beneath the surface of the Papal Court: in their ruthless quest for power, her family will ...

This novel interprets Biblical history through the lens of an alien species and their complex relationship with the human race.These aliens have been involved in human history since Adam and Eve, and throughout Biblical history, humanity has responded to these aliens in many ways -- the most significant textual responses being scattered throughout Biblical texts.And the Humans Wrote delves deeply into how humans have responded to alien involvement through the wonders of the ...