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Book Notes
| The Urban Indian Experience in America, by Donald L. Fixico (University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 2000. Photographs, notes, bibliography, index. 288 pages. $17.95 paper)
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An ethnohistory of modern urban Native Americans, this study is built on firsthand observations, interviews, and conventional historical sources. Donald Fixico explains the federal government's push for relocation, starting in the 1940s, and the adjustments required by every generation of urban Native Americans since. He recounts their efforts to retain traditions in a modern setting, their battles against stereotypes and prejudice, and their struggle to find security in the urban economic system. |
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| Sweet Home in Linn County: New Life, New Land, by Martha Jane Steinbacher (Arcadia Publishing, Chicago, 2002. Photographs, maps. 128 pages. $19.99 paper)
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A history of Sweet Home, Oregon, in photographs, Steinbacher's book features a variety of high-quality reproductions of images that illustrate the area's early twentieth-century farm life, mining and logging operations, schools and places of worship, and prominent citizens. |
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| Faith, Food, and Family in a Yupik Whaling Community, by Carol Zane Jolles, with the assistance of Elinor Mikaghaq Oozeva (University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2002. Photographs, illustrations, maps, glossary, bibliography, index. 364 pages. $50.00 cloth)
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The Yupik Eskimo people and their prehistoric ancestors have occupied a site on Alaska's St. Lawrence Island for more than fifteen hundred years, and Carol Zane Jolles's comprehensive history shows how ancient values and beliefs continue to shape this community today. Over a ten-year period, the author conducted interviews with villagers and researched archival records to create this intimate look at the Yupik people's physical and spiritual worlds and the relationship between them. |
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| The Story of Taxol: Nature and Politics in the Pursuit of an Anti-cancer Drug, by Jordan Goodman and Vivien Walsh (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K., 2001. 282 pages. $27.95 cloth)
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Jordan Goodman and Vivien Walsh use firsthand sources to reveal the controversy that transpired behind the scenes from the discovery of taxol, the so-called miracle drug, derived from the bark of the Pacific yew. A scathing exposé of collusion between the drug industry and cancer researchers, the book offers a rare look inside the business of cancer prevention. |
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| When Montana and I Were Young: A Frontier Childhood, by Margaret Bell, edited and with an introduction by Mary Clearman Blew (University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 2002. 253 pages. $24.95 cloth)
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Lost for half a century and never before published, this memoir by Margaret Bell (1888–1982) is an account of her childhood on the high plains of Montana, a tale that begins the year before Montana achieved statehood. Bell provides a broad view of ranch life and the rural West at the turn of the century and an intimate look at her struggle through poverty, hardship, and physical abuse. |
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| At Home Afloat: Women on the Waters of the Pacific Northwest, by Nancy Pagh (University of Calgary Press, Calgary, Alberta, and University of Idaho Press, Moscow, 2001. Photographs, illustrations, bibliography, index. 199 pages. $24.95 paper)
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A love of the sea and a lifetime of experience in boats inform this text by Nancy Pagh, a native of Anacortes, Washington, and professor of English at Western Washington University. Pagh examines gender roles in maritime history, including space and gender politics aboard ship, and explores the varied ways women have used writing to express their relationship to the natural world. |
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| The Sherman Tour Journals of Colonel Richard Irving Dodge, edited by Wayne R. Kime (University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2002. Illustrations, maps, notes, photographs, bibliography, index. 240 pages. $34.95 cloth)
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This compilation represents the final two of twenty known journals written by Colonel Richard Irving Dodge between 1875 and 1883. In the summer of 1883, Dodge joined General William Tecumseh Sherman on a ten-thousand-mile inspection tour of the western United States. The journals provide insight into the personalities of both Dodge and Sherman and the relationship between the two men. Editorial comments and annotations provide context. |
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| John Sutter and a Wider West, edited by Kenneth N. Owens (University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 2002. Photograph, illustration, map, bibliographies, index. 148 pages. $15.00 paper)
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John Sutter's role in shaping the history of the West has been debated for over 150 years; the scholarly essays in this collection instead explore history's role in shaping Sutter. The mythos of the gold rush–era entrepreneur is considered in pieces by Howard R. Lamar, Albert L. Hurtado, Iris H.W. Engstrand, Richard White, and Patricia Nelson Limerick. Chapters from Sutter's diary are also included. |
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| Glacial Lake Missoula and Its Humongous Floods, by David Alt (Mountain Press, Missoula, Mont., 2001. Photographs, maps, illustrations, glossary, bibliography, index. 208 pages. $15.00 paper)
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Giant current ripples on arid farmland, mudslide marks on mountainsides, and Montana boulders in the Willamette Valley are all explained as the result of an Ice Age catastrophe known as the Missoula Floods. Geologist David Alt contends that a massive body of water tore open the landscape between modern-day Missoula and the Pacific Ocean and explains why this theory — and five hundred miles of geological evidence that supports it — is stilled debated. |
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| Dreamer-Prophets of the Columbia Plateau: Smohalla and Skolaskin, by Robert H. Ruby and John A. Brown (1989; reprint, University of Oklahoma Press/Red River Books, Norman, 2002. Photographs, maps, notes, bibliography, index. 257 pages. $19.95 paper)
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Robert Ruby and John Brown profile two nineteenth-century American Indian spiritual leaders striving for salvation in a time of social and cultural stress. In response to the influx of white settlers on the Columbia River, thousands of Native people in the Pacific Northwest were drawn to the utopian promise of the Dreamer religion, and the Dreamer-Prophets Smohalla and Skolaskin emerged as charismatic — and ultimately tragic — luminaries to show the way. |
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