Lily Nakai and her family lived in southern California, where sometimes she and a friend dreamt of climbing the Hollywood sign that lit the night. At age ten, after believing that her family was simply going on a “camping trip,” she found herself living in a tar-papered barrack, nightly gazing out instead at a searchlight. She wondered if anything would ever be normal again.
     In this creative memoir, Lily Havey combines storytelling, watercolor, and personal photographs to recount her youth in two Japanese-American internment camps during World War II. In short vignettes snapshots of people, recreated scenes and events a ten-year-old girl develops into a teenager while confined. Vintage photographs reveal the historical, cultural, and familial contexts of that growth and of the Nakais’ dislocation. The paintings and her animated writing together pull us into a turbulent era when America disgracefully incarcerated, without due process, thousands of American citizens because of their race.
     These stories of love, loss, and discovery recall a girl balancing precariously between childhood and adolescence. In turn wrenching, funny, touching, and biting but consistently engrossing, they elucidate the daily challenges of life in the camp and the internees’ many adaptations. 

Winner of the Evans Biography Award. 
Selected by the American Library Association as one the Best of the Best from University Presses.
Finalist in the cover design category in the Southwest Book Design and Production Awards. 
 

From the 1910s to the 1970s, author and linguist J. R. R. Tolkien worked at creating plausibly realistic languages to be used by the creatures and characters in his novels. Like his other languages, Sindarin was a new invention, not based on any existing or artificial language. By the time of his death, he had established fairly complete descriptions of two languages, the "elvish" tongues Quenya and Sindarin. He was able to compose poetic and prose texts in both, and he also constructed a lengthy sequence of changes for both from an ancestral "proto-language," comparable to the development of historical languages and capable of analysis with the techniques of historical linguistics.

In A Gateway to Sindarin, David Salo has created a volume that is a serious look at an entertaining topic. Salo covers the grammar, morphology, and history of the language. Supplemental material includes a vocabulary, Sindarin names, a glossary of terms, and an annotated list of works relevant to Sindarin. What emerges is an homage to Tolkien's scholarly philological efforts.

Robert Fillmore’s clear, easy-to-read text documents spectacular features of the eastern Colorado Plateau, one of the most interesting and scenic geologic regions in the world. The area covered in detail stretches from the Book Cliffs to the deep canyons of the San Juan River area. The events that shaped this vast region are clearly described and include the most recent interpretations of ongoing geologic forces. The book also includes mile-by-mile road logs with explanations of the various features for most of the scenic roads in the region, including Arches National Park, Canyonlands National Park, and the Natural Bridges area.

This detailed interpretive guide explains the forces that created Utah's unforgettable scenery, while providing road logs of highways and major backroads through the Grand Staircase of the Colorado Plateau.

Where in Utah can you find a fossilized ant hill that is at least fifty million years old? Do you know the location of an ancient beach that disappeared along with the dinosaurs that strolled it? Find out in The Geology of the Parks, Monuments, and Wildlands of Southern Utah.

This fascinating and authoritative guide belongs on the dashboard or in the backpack of every visitor to southern Utah or student of its natural history. More than sixty illustrations and nearly three dozen photographs accompany clear explanations of the spectacular geologic features of this landscape, including Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon, and Zion National Parks, as well as the Grand Staircase-Escalante Monument.

Section I of the volume surveys chronologically the origins of the formations and structural features and the geologic processes that have shaped the Colorado Plateau. Section II provides road logs with mile-by-mile geologic descriptions of key sections of highway traversing this area.

This detailed interpretive guide turns any windshield into a window of opportunity for understanding the forces that created Utah’s unforgettable scenery—whether it be a breathtaking panorama or a dazzling array of fins and fractures, pillars and pedestals, or cliffs and chasms.

Despite being the second-driest state in the U.S., a substantial portion of Utah’s geologic and cultural history involves rivers, and the effects of flowing water are evident across the state. This book is about the geology of the rivers that shaped Utah’s present landscape, the ancient rivers that left their deposits as a part of the mountains, and the mythical rivers that inspired early exploration.
 

Parry approaches his subject from many angles—the mountain building events that provide a source for the rivers, the physiographic provinces that give the modern rivers their character, and the deposits of sand and gravel that formed as ancient rivers flowed. Fossil and modern fish fauna are described to provide a unique guide to some aspects of rivers not available by any other method. The description of rivers is completed with the 'historical' account of rivers that did not exist—the mythical rivers of Utah.

Transcending the notion of a traditional geology text, Parry provides detailed commentary on historical exploration and the development of the local scenery. His ambitious scholarship offers a fresh look at Utah’s changing landscape throughout geologic time.
 

Drift down the Colorado River through Glen Canyon and explore the people and places that encompass the history of this majestic canyon before it drowned in the rising waters of Lake Powell.
Author Gregory Crampton led the historical investigations of Glen and San Juan Canyons from 1957 to 1963 under contract with the National Park Service. The objective was to locate and record historical sites that would be lost to the rising waters of the reservoir. This book records that effort.

First published in 1986, this edition has been revised to include several new “ghosts” of Glen Canyon, including a never-before-published foreword by Edward Abbey. It also showcases stunning color photographs by Philip Hyde and includes hundreds of black-and-white photographs taken by the original salvage crews.

This informative guide to the historic treasures of Glen Canyon includes numbered maps keyed to each location. It is a book for both the armchair traveler and the lake enthusiast eager for a journey through the past to a place few had the privilege to know.

As the Ice Age came to an end, North America lost a stunning variety of animals. Mammoths, mastodon, llamas, ground-dwelling sloths the size of elephants, beavers the size of bears, pronghorn antelope the size of poodles, and carnivores to chase them—sabertooth cats, dire wolves, American lions and cheetahs; these and many more were gone by 10,000 years ago. Giant Sloths and Sabertooth Cats surveys all these animals, with a particular focus on the Great Basin. The book also explores the major attempts to explain the extinctions. Because some believe that they were due to the activities of human hunters, the author also reviews the archaeological evidence left by the earliest known human occupants of the Great Basin, showing that people were here at the same time and in the same places as many of the extinct animals. 

 
Were these animals abundant in the Great Basin? A detailed analysis of the distinctive assemblages of plants that now live in this region leads to a surprising, and perhaps controversial, conclusion about those abundances. 
 
If you are interested in Ice Age mammals or in the Ice Age archaeology of North America, if you are interested in the natural history of the Great Basin or the ways in which the plants of today’s landscapes might be used to understand the deeper past, you will be fascinated by this book.  

The Gila Monster spends 99% of its life underground, making encounters with this lizard extremely rare. Sightings are infrequent even for the biologists who study them. When one does stumble upon a Gila Monster, however, this slow-moving lizard is not easily forgotten. Advertised by orange-and-black coloration and followed by stories of venomous power, the Gila Monster carries a mystique like that of few other animals.

In this volume, authors David Brown and Neil Carmony dig out the tall tales, dispel the myths, and reveal the lizard’s true character. Through a collection of biological and historical facts mixed with entertaining stories, they have created an illuminating account of America’s largest and only poisonous lizard. Written in an engaging style, The Gila Monster is a fun and educational read for all who are intrigued by the Southwest and its most mysterious denizen.
 

The first and only anthology of key writings about Glacier National Park, this comprehensive collection ranges from Native American myths to early exploration narratives to contemporary journeys, from investigations of the park’s geology and biology to hair-raising encounters with wild animals, fires, and mountain peaks.
 
Soon after the park was established in 1910, visitors began to arrive, often with pen in hand. They included such well-known authors as mystery writer Mary Roberts Rinehart, historian Agnes C. Laut, fiction writer Dorothy Johnson, humorist Irvin S. Cobb, poet Vachel Lindsay, and artist Maynard Dixon—all featured in the book. Readers will encounter colorful characters who lived in and around the park in its early days, including railroad magnate and conservationist Louis Hill, renegade ranger and poacher Joe Cosley, bootlegger Josephine Doody, and old-time cowboy guide Jim Whilt. Blackfeet and Kalispel myths, politically charged descriptions by early explorers such as John Muir and George Bird Grinnell, and full-color reproductions of the illustrated letters of cowboy artist and Glacier resident Charles M. Russell are also included. 

Copublished with the Glacier National Park Conservancy.
The Glacier National Park Conservancy preserves the Park for generations to come. Learn more about our work at www.glacier.org

Part of the National Park Reader series, edited by Lance Newman and David Stanley

In 1956, Congress passed legislation that provided authorization and funds for emergency research to be conducted in Glen Canyon in response to the threat of losses posted by the construction of the Glen Canyon Dam in northern Arizona. For eight years, scientists worked against the clock to record the archaeology, geology, history, and paleontology of the region before the waters of Lake Powell covered the area.

In this highly interpretive summary, Jesse Jennings preserves the achievements of the salvage team and explains how the finds affected previous conclusions. Maps and photographs capture archaeological artifacts as well as the landscape of the area. This book also highlights the larger consequences of the massive salvage project — among them the stimulation of additional Southwest research, the applications of techniques made in response to emergency situations, and a valuable perspective on the Pueblo culture. Because this area is becoming increasingly controversial, with a raging debate over whether Lake Powell should be drained, Glen Canyon: An Archaeological Summary stands as more than a model of salvage archaeology. It is also a record and testament of the rich history of Glen Canyon.

AKA Glen Canyon Series Number 6. Part II of III Parts. Contains the archaeological survey of the Kaiparowits Plateau by James Gunnerson, the Glen Canyon main stem survey by Don Fowler, and the San Juan triangle survey by Ted Weller reports.

In his new book, The Glen Canyon Country, archaeologist Don D. Fowler shares the history of a place and the peoples who sojourned there over the course of several thousand years. To tell this story, he weaves his personal experience as a student working on the Glen Canyon Salvage Project with accounts of early explorers, geologists, miners, railroad developers, settlers, river runners, and others who entered this magical place. The book details the canyon’s story via historical and scientific summaries, biographical sketches, personal memoir, and previously unpublished photos of the land and its explorers.

The life of Patrick Edward Connor serves as a half-century slice of western American history. After leaving New York City, where he had arrived at the age of twelve as a poor Irish immigrant, the nineteen-year-old youth joined the U.S. Army in 1839. He fought in the war with Mexico and then joined the gold rush in California until marrying and settling down in Stockton in 1854.

The Civil War found him volunteering again, this time as colonel of California troops sent to the Utah Territory to protect the mail lines from Indian attacks. Bitterly anti-Mormon, Connor spent the war years alternately engaging in a war of words with Brigham Young or in fighting Indians in northern Utah and present-day Wyoming. After the Civil War, ex-Major General Connor began mining operations in Utah and Nevada, ventures that went from boom to bust. He spent his final years in straitened financial circumstances.

Patrick Edward Connor was a “Man of the West,” possessing both its prejudices and its democratic, independent spirit. His greatest success lay as a military leader, and he would have agreed that he was made for war, not peace. He left an imprint on the history of the American West, remembered as the founder of Fort Douglas, as the “first gentile in Utah,” the “father of Utah mining,” and the “father of the Liberal Party in Utah.”

 

The Agha Shahid Ali Prize in Poetry was inaugurated in 2003 to honor the late poet, a nationally recognized writer and a former professor at the University of Utah, and is sponsored by the University of Utah Press and the University of Utah Department of English.

The Gods We Worship Live Next Door is the 2005 prizewinning volume selected by this year's judge, Grace Schulman, distinguished professor of English at Baruch College, City University of New York.

“‘Nothing is nicer,’ Grandpa used to say, ‘than a full barn and a full granary.’ He might have said a full cellar too, for the rows of bottled fruit loomed on the shelves in the dim light, and the aroma of apples filled the nostrils. We could sit down at the dinner table knowing where everything on it had come from, and the process by which it had been prepared. We had before us and around us tangible evidence of the interconnection of things, of tilling, and seedtime, and harvest, of process and product, work and reward. Abundance is what remained when the threshing was done and the mellow Utah autumn slid gradually into winter, abundance in the storehouse for man and beast, evidence that we reap as we have sown. And abundance in the memory which lasts long after the barn and granary are empty hulks, for sometimes we also reap where others have sown.”—from chapter sixteen 
 

"Ever since I was 10 years old, I’d felt myself yearning to 'go astray.' For me, that didn’t mean drinking and cavorting with boys; it meant being myself without fear."—from the book

What happens when a trained singer who grew up in a "house of vowels" finds that her voice is not her own? What happens when a woman loses the Mormon faith of her childhood and abandons the rituals she’s always known? What does a woman, already married for thirteen years by her early thirties, do when she realizes she has been "lying for years?" How does one sing, with grace, from the heart?

In the spirit of Mary Catherine Bateson’s Composing a Life and Kathleen Norris’s Cloister Walk, Heidi Hart’s luminous memoir retraces her search for an opening to her heart’s path. She finds that the religious life of her Latter-day Saint family—which includes a revered General Authority—robs her of her voice and her spirit. When she discovers Catharine, a mute, Quaker ancestor, Hart begins a vital journey—a journey blessed by her devout and devoted husband; a journey that leads her as she studies Zuni mythology, Jewish tradition, Benedictine monastic ritual, Emily Dickinson, and Saint Hildegard of Bingen—a journey that leads her to a place that feels like home: the company of Friends, the Quaker community of Salt Lake City.

With grace and lyricism, Hart shares the private, personal wisdom she has earned in her community of friends, a community that embraces silences and dissonance, a place where she can't keep from singing.

"Overheard in a coffee shop the other day, one young woman severely admonishing another about the dangers of amateur séances: 'Just one wrong move, and Poof! Suddenly every dead rock star and TV evangelist is knocking at your door and forcing you to bake ten thousand apple pies. You can’t trust these ghosts. They have a mind of their own.'"
—from the book

Just because this is a collection of essays about psychics, murderers, strange disappearances, and occult phenomena doesn’t mean it isn’t funny. With wit, wry curiosity, and redemptive irony John P. O’Grady peels back the surface of the seemingly normal to reveal the dubious, the inexplicable, the outlandish.

Consider Leo LaHappe, a.k.a. "The Bugman." During a 1970s-era dormitory bull session Leo reveals a strange obsession with Virginia Dare, the first child born of English parents in the New World. His obsession becomes the catalyst for a campus-wide witch hunt at the University of Maine.

Or, what about the beekeeper who knocks on O’Grady’s door. Dressed in his professional gear—boots, coveralls, and dark veil—the man seeks permission to search the author’s woods for his hive. Turns out he hadn’t told the bees about his mother’s death and, sensitive creatures that they are, the bees had run away. "I have to tell them I’m sorry," the beekeeper explains. "I just hope they forgive me and come home."

Grave Goods includes ghost stories, macabre modern legends, and metaphysical investigations, all informed by the natural sciences, history, philosophy, literature, and mythology. From laugh-out-loud funny to eerily thoughtful, these essays reveal the natural world as a place of unnatural surprises and strange beauty. A place where Rip Van Winkle, O’Grady’s college buddies, and ragtag psychics rub shoulders with Buddha, Socrates, and Stephen King—and it all makes perfect sense.

“The sound of parenthood is the sigh.” So begins Gravity Hill, written from the perspective of a new father seeking hope, beauty, and meaning in an uncertain world. Many memoirs recount the author’s experiences of growing up and struggling with demons; Werner’s shows how old demons sometimes return on the heels of something as beautiful as children. Werner’s memoir is about growing up, getting older, looking back, and wondering what lies ahead—a process that becomes all the more complicated and intense when parenting is involved. Moving backward and forward between past, present, and future, Gravity Hill does not delineate time so much as collapse it.

Werner narrates his struggle growing up in suburban Utah as anon-Mormon and what it took for him, his siblings, and his friends to feel like they belonged. Bonding in separation, they indulged in each other, in natural and urban landscapes, and sometimes in the destructive behaviors that are the native resort of outsidersincluding promiscuous and occasionally violent sexual behavior—and for some, paths to death and suicide. Gravity Hill is the story of the author’s descent into and eventual emergence from his dysfunction and into a newfound life. Infused with humor, honesty, and reflection, this literary memoir will resonate with readers young and old.

After the passage of nearly a half-century, this book remains both one of the most informative and readable general histories of Utah yet written and a tribute to the brilliance of its author, the late Dale Morgan (1914-71).

Approached as history, geography, geology, or high adventure, The Great Salt Lake is fascinating reading. From the first Americans, through mountain men, religious empires, railroads, and resorts, the remnant of ancient Lake Bonneville has been a nexus for human history, uniting a haunting beauty with raw desolation, 'strangely removed from common experience.'

Edited by Michael S. Foster and Shirley Gorenstein

Archaeology

Mesoamerican studies, as they are still practiced today, are framed by the Spanish colonial intrusion into Mexico from the east, and subsequent involvement with the Aztec Empire. Greater Mesoamerica expands the definition of "Mesoamerica" beyond the more traditionally accepted central Mexican areas to both western and northwestern Mexico where sophisticated cultures were flourishing outside the realm of Spanish influence. It is the first comprehensive overview of both regions since the Handbook of Middle American Indians was published in the early 1970s.

Based on recent archaeological surveys and excavations, the chapters in this volume provide current, comprehensive, area-by-area summaries of the region's Precolumbian past, noting the discovery of new cultural configurations, new connections, and new complexities.

Michael Frome, who began his distinguished career in environmental journalism in the 1960s, has been called the dean of American conservation. As former Senator Gaylord Nelson once told the members of Congress, "No writer in America has more persistently and effectively argued for the need of a national ethics of environmental stewardship."

In Green Ink: An Introduction to Environmental Journalism, Frome has forged decades of experience in the field he helped pioneer into a valuable primer for environmental advocates and writers. This appealing blend of anecdote, advice, personal testimony, and a nuts and bolts instruction offers a thorough survey of rewards and challenges that environmental studies students might expect to encounter on along their chosen career paths. In addition to the extraordinary contributions made by "marquis" names such as Rachel Carson and Bernard DeVoto, Frome recounts the remarkable stories of a host of other writer-advocates and their largely unsung roles in investigating and publicizing environmental problems and abuses.

 

"There is something ominous about a swift river, and something thrilling about a river of any kind."—from Beyond the Hundredth Meridian by Wallace Stegner

Beginning above Flaming Gorge Dam in southwestern Wyoming, the Green River traverses the complete variety of terrain on the Colorado Plateau before joining the Colorado River above Cataract Canyon in southeastern Utah. Like its more famous cousin, the Colorado, the Green has captivated, capsized, and cajoled all types of characters with challenges and beauty to match its geologic variety.

In A Green River Reader editor Alan Blackstock brings this mysterious, magnificent, thrilling river to the reader with an interpretive guide that will inform both river novices and river veterans. Assembled here is every significant written testament to this "awesome ditch," from Domínguez-Escalante to Kit Carson and John C. Frémont; to contemporary American naturalists and writers including Wallace Stegner, Bernard DeVoto, David Brower, Ann Zwinger, Ellen Melloy, and Edward Abbey. Those with a story to tell—those who trapped the Green’s beavers, endured its wild rapids, were humbled by its imposing canyon walls, fought for its beautiful landscapes, or whose "pulse was hurried" by the "lofty chasms, walled in by precipices of red rock"—are collected here.

If you’re headed down the Green, make sure that your dry bag or ammo can has room for just one more thing, your copy of A Green River Reader.

Archaeologists refer to stone artifacts that are altered by or used to alter other items through abrasion, pecking, or polishing as "ground stone." This includes mortars, and pestles used to process vegetal materials, pigments, clays, and tempers; abraders, polishing stones, and hammerstones for manufacturing other artifacts; and artifacts shaped by abrasion or pecking, such as axes, pipes, figurines, ornaments, and architectural pieces. Because there is a fuzzy line between flaked and ground stone artifacts, some analysts state that ground stone includes any stone item not considered flaked.

This manual presents a flexible yet structured method for analyzing stone artifacts and classifying them in meaningful categories. The analysis techniques record important attributes based on design, manufacture, and use.

Part I contains discussions on determining function, classification, attributes of grinding technology, use-wear analysis, modeling tool use, utilization of ethnographic and experimental resources, and research suggestions. Part II contains definitions and descriptions of artifact types. Here the author also seeks to unravel the knot that has developed around conflicting application of terms.

A significant reference for any archaeological fieldworker or student who encounters such artifacts.

Home to former presidents and to movie stars, Palm Springs and its surrounding deserts are among the fastest growing and wealthiest areas of the U.S. But beneath the glitter lies a story of turmoil and a pattern of excess that prefigures many of the issues that face the nation.
The Grumbling Gods surveys the history and allure of Palm Springs, beginning with the Cahuilla Indians, the first historical residents of the region. It includes accounts from the early explorers, a report of mysterious shipwrecks amidst the sand dunes, and selections from the grimly rollicking writings of Raymond Chandler. It penetrates the tinsel of casinos and the placidity of gated golf communities to reveal the painful beauty of deserts and mountains under assault.
Francisco Patencio, the last of the traditional Cahuilla Indians, warned his white neighbors to be careful, that the grim gods inhabiting the canyons around Palm Springs were angry. It is their grumbling, at once chilling and prophetic, and yet sometimes humorous, that we hear from the pages of this book.

When Barney Clark received the Jarvik-7 artificial heart in 1983 and Cold Fusion came under fire in 1989, Chase Peterson, as the University of Utah president, was inevitably pulled into these campus events. While these episodes may be the best known in Peterson’s professional history, they are certainly not the only stories that make his autobiography worth reading.

The Guardian Poplar tells of a man who grew up in small-town Utah and carried his pioneer and Mormon heritage to a New England prep school and later to Harvard. He then returned to Utah as a doctor, but unexpectedly found himself back at Harvard as its dean of admissions, handling issues such as the Vietnam War and racial and gender reform. The book explains how Peterson’s home state recruited him back to become an administrator at the University of Utah and how he would eventually become the university president, taking on new issues and challenges. Peterson recounts these years by drawing on anecdotes that recall the people he served and the moments that brought his life meaning.

This autobiography is a compelling account of how Peterson has managed to balance family and career, handle the tensions that have arisen between his faith and his scientific training, and remain solid in the face of his newest challenge—cancer. The book’s engaging prose and honest reflections are sure to intrigue and inspire readers who know the man well, as well as those readers who simply want to know a man who can be described as dedicated, faithful, hardworking, and hopeful about the future.

“When I first met Chase Peterson as a Harvard freshman—along with our joint friend and brother David Evans—something deeply touched me. It was not only his sincere smile and open embrace but also a sense that here was a kind and courageous man comfortable in his own skin, secure in who he was yet eager to encounter new persons, new experiences, and new challenges. . . . He was from Utah but in New England, a Mormon in old Harvard, and a medical doctor in the deanship of admissions. Little did I know that his journey would enhance and enrich my own—owing to his critical allegiance to his family, his faith, his friends, and to his citizenship of country and world. His prophetic witness at Harvard in the turbulent ‘60s and ‘70s, his promotion of black priesthood in the Mormon church, his support of antiapartheid protests in the ‘80s, and his steadfast defense of academic freedom in the Cold Fusion controversy in the early ‘90s all express his quiet and humble effort to be true to himself—a self grounded in, but
not limited by, a rich Mormon tradition.”—from the foreword by Cornel West

In 1879, 230 settlers in southwestern Utah heeded the call from leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to pull up stakes and move to the distant San Juan country of southeastern Utah. Their year-long journey became one of the most extraordinary wagon trips ever undertaken in North America, their trail one of peril, difficulty, and spectacular vistas. Beginning in Cedar City, Utah, this trail crosses today’s Dixie National Forest, skirts Bryce Canyon National Park, bisects the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, crosses the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, and comes close to Natural Bridges National Monument on its way to Bluff, Utah.

Though the trail that these devoted pioneers broke across raw frontier was used for several years afterward, no highway was built over most of the route because it was deemed too rugged for modern vehicles. In addition to the historical value of the story of these pioneers, this guide includes road logs, maps, and hiking trails along the historic trail. It also points out fascinating natural history along the way, making A Guide to Southern Utah’s Hole-in-the-Rock Trail a significant reference for a variety of readers.