Book picks similar to
Fire on the Plateau: Conflict And Endurance In The American Southwest by Charles F. Wilkinson
nonfiction
history
american
ecology
The Mountains of California
John Muir - 1894
Blending keen observations of flora, geography, and geology, the natural forces that shape the landscape, and the changing seasons, Muir paints a timeless portrait of the wilderness he called “the Range of Light, the most divinely beautiful of all the mountain chains I have ever seen.” Also included are visits to two famous Cascades peaks, Mount Shasta and Mount St. Helens
Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory
Claudio Saunt - 2020
Justified as a humanitarian enterprise, the undertaking was to be systematic and rational, overseen by Washington’s small but growing bureaucracy. But as the policy unfolded over the next decade, thousands of Native Americans died under the federal government’s auspices, and thousands of others lost their possessions and homelands in an orgy of fraud, intimidation, and violence. Unworthy Republic reveals how expulsion became national policy and describes the chaotic and deadly results of the operation to deport 80,000 men, women, and children.Drawing on firsthand accounts and the voluminous records produced by the federal government, Saunt’s deeply researched book argues that Indian Removal, as advocates of the policy called it, was not an inevitable chapter in U.S. expansion across the continent. Rather, it was a fiercely contested political act designed to secure new lands for the expansion of slavery and to consolidate the power of the southern states. Indigenous peoples fought relentlessly against the policy, while many U.S. citizens insisted that it was a betrayal of the nation’s values. When Congress passed the act by a razor-thin margin, it authorized one of the first state-sponsored mass deportations in the modern era, marking a turning point for native peoples and for the United States.In telling this gripping story, Saunt shows how the politics and economics of white supremacy lay at the heart of the expulsion of Native Americans, how corruption, greed, and administrative indifference and incompetence contributed to the debacle of its implementation, and how the consequences still resonate today.
The Mueller Report
Robert S. Mueller III - 2019
This investigation includes any possible links or coordination between Donald Trump's presidential campaign and the Russian government, "and any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation." The scope of the investigation reportedly includes potential obstruction of justice by Trump and others. The investigation, since it began on May 17, 2017, has been conducted by the United States Department of Justice Special Counsel's Office, headed by Robert Mueller, a Republican and former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). This book chronicles the legal actions Mueller has taken against Trumps associates in the 2016 Presidential Elections.
Dixie: A Personal Odyssey Through Events That Shaped the Modern South
Curtis Wilkie - 2001
In 1969, in the wake of the violence surrounding the civil rights movement, Wilkie left the South and vowed never to live there again. But after traveling the world as a reporter, he returned in 1993, drawn by a deep-rooted affinity with the territory of his youth. Here, he endeavors to make sense of the enormous changes that have convulsed the South for more than four decades. Through vivid recollections of landmark events, Dixie becomes both a striking eyewitness account of history and an unconventional tale of redemption full of beauty, humor, and pathos.
Wah-to-yah, and the Taos Trail; or Prairie travel and scalp dances, with a look at Los Rancheros from Muleback and the Rocky Mountain Campfire
Lewis Hector Garrard - 1972
Beginning in what is now Kansas City he joined a caravan headed for Bent’s Fort in southeastern Colorado near the Spanish Peaks, which was known to the Native Americans as Wah-to-Yah. Just before Garrard had arrived in the southwest Charles Bent, who was the recently appointed Governor of the newly acquired New Mexico Territory, was scalped and killed by Pueblo warriors during the Taos Revolt. Garrard’s account is therefore a vivid first-hand account of the Taos Revolt and its aftermath. Through the course of Wah-to-yah and the Taos Trail Garrard explains how he came into contact with some of the most famous figures of western history, including Kit Carson, Jim Beckwourth, Ceran St. Vrain, George F. Ruxton, William Bent, and others. Scholars like Robert Gale have highlighted how the book provides “anthropologically accurate” descriptions of the Cheyenne Indians and other Native American tribes in the southwest of America. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of the old west, for as the Pulitzer Prize winning author A. B. Guthrie Jr. stated, it is “the genuine article” and brilliantly depicts “the Indian, the trader, the mountain man, their dress, and behavior and speech and the country and climate they lived in.” Lewis Hector Garrard was the son of a prominent family from Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1846 he set out for a ten-month trip to the southwestern United States. While in Taos, Garrard attended the trial of some of the Mexicans and Pueblos who had revolted against U.S. rule of New Mexico, newly captured in the Mexican-American War. Garrard wrote the only eye witness account of the trial and hanging of six convicted men. His book Wah-to-Yah was first published in 1850 and he passed away in 1887.
Antitrust: Taking on Monopoly Power from the Gilded Age to the Digital Age
Amy Klobuchar - 2021
This fascinating history of the antitrust movement shows us what led to the present moment and offers achievable solutions to prevent monopolies, promote business competition, and encourage innovation.In a world where Google reportedly controls 90 percent of the search engine market and Big Pharma’s drug price hikes impact healthcare accessibility, monopolies can hurt consumers and cause marketplace stagnation. Klobuchar—the much-admired former candidate for president of the United States—argues for swift, sweeping reform in economic, legislative, social welfare, and human rights policies, and describes plans, ideas, and legislative proposals designed to strengthen antitrust laws and antitrust enforcement.Klobuchar writes of the historic and current fights against monopolies in America, from Standard Oil and the Sherman Anti-Trust Act to the Progressive Era's trust-busters; from the breakup of Ma Bell (formerly the world's biggest company and largest private telephone system) to the pricing monopoly of Big Pharma and the future of the giant tech companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Google.She begins with the Gilded Age (1870s-1900), when builders of fortunes and rapacious robber barons such as J. P. Morgan, John Rockefeller, and Cornelius Vanderbilt were reaping vast fortunes as industrialization swept across the American landscape, with the rich getting vastly richer and the poor, poorer. She discusses President Theodore Roosevelt, who, during the Progressive Era (1890s-1920), "busted" the trusts, breaking up monopolies; the Clayton Act of 1914; the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914; and the Celler-Kefauver Act of 1950, which it strengthened the Clayton Act. She explores today's Big Pharma and its price-gouging; and tech, television, content, and agriculture communities and how a marketplace with few players, or one in which one company dominates distribution, can hurt consumer prices and stifle innovation.As the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights, Klobuchar provides a fascinating exploration of antitrust in America and offers a way forward to protect all Americans from the dangers of curtailed competition, and from vast information gathering, through monopolies.
Anasazi America: Seventeen Centuries on the Road from Center Place
David E. Stuart - 2000
A vast and powerful alliance of thousands of farming hamlets and nearly 100 spectacular towns integrated the region through economic and religious ties, and the whole system was interconnected with hundreds of miles of roads. It took these Anasazi farmers more than seven centuries to lay the agricultural, organizational, and technological groundwork for the creation of classic Chacoan civilization, which lasted about 200 years--only to collapse spectacularly in a mere 40.Why did such a great society collapse? Who survived? Why? In this lively book anthropologist/archaeologist David Stuart presents answers to these questions that offer useful lessons to modern societies. His account of the rise and fall of the Chaco Anasazi brings to life the people known to us today as the architects of Chaco Canyon, the spectacular national park in New Mexico that thousands of tourists visit every year.
Lakota Woman
Mary Crow Dog - 1990
Rebelling against the aimless drinking, punishing missionary school, narrow strictures for women, and violence and hopeless of reservation life, she joined the new movement of tribal pride sweeping Native American communities in the sixties and seventies. Mary eventually married Leonard Crow Dog, the American Indian Movement's chief medicine man, who revived the sacred but outlawed Ghost Dance. Originally published in 1990, Lakota Woman was a national best seller and winner of the American Book Award. It is a unique document, unparalleled in American Indian literature, a story of death, of determination against all odds, of the cruelties perpetuated against American Indians, and of the Native American struggle for rights. Working with Richard Erdoes, one of the twentieth century's leading writers on Native American affairs, Brave Bird recounts her difficult upbringing and the path of her fascinating life.
24 Hours Inside the President's Bunker: 9-11-01: The White House
Robert J. Darling - 2010
Robert J. Darling organizes President Bush's trip to Florida on Sept. 10, 2001, he believes the next couple of days will be quiet. He has no idea that a war is about to begin. The next day, after terrorists crash airliners into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, Maj. Darling rushes to the president's underground chamber at the White House. There, he takes on the task of liaison between the vice president, national security advisor and the Pentagon. He works directly with the National Command Authority, and he's in the room when Vice President Cheney orders two fighter jets to get airborne in order to shoot down United Flight 93. Throughout the attacks, Maj. Darling witnesses the unprecedented actions that leaders are taking to defend America. As Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and others make decisions at a lightning pace with little or no deliberation, he's there to lend his support. Follow Darling's story as he becomes a Marine Corps aviator and rises through the ranks to play an incredible role in responding to a crisis that changed the world in 9-11-01: The White House: Twenty-Four Hours inside the President's Bunker.
Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains
William F. Drannan - 1903
You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.
That Wild Country: An Epic Journey through the Past, Present, and Future of America's Public Lands
Mark Kenyon - 2019
These vast expanses provide a home to wildlife populations, a vital source of clean air and water, and a haven for recreation.Since its inception, however, America’s public land system has been embroiled in controversy—caught in the push and pull between the desire to develop the valuable resources the land holds or conserve them. Alarmed by rising tensions over the use of these lands, hunter, angler, and outdoor enthusiast Mark Kenyon set out to explore the spaces involved in this heated debate, and learn firsthand how they came to be and what their future might hold.Part travelogue and part historical examination, That Wild Country invites readers on an intimate tour of the wondrous wild and public places that are a uniquely profound and endangered part of the American landscape.
Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats
Kristen Iversen - 2012
Her father's hidden liquor bottles, the strange cancers in children in the neighborhood, the truth about what was made at Rocky Flats (cleaning supplies, her mother guessed)—best not to inquire too deeply into any of it.But as Iversen grew older, she began to ask questions. She learned about the infamous 1969 Mother's Day fire, in which a few scraps of plutonium spontaneously ignited and—despite the desperate efforts of firefighters—came perilously close to a "criticality," the deadly blue flash that signals a nuclear chain reaction. Intense heat and radiation almost melted the roof, which nearly resulted in an explosion that would have had devastating consequences for the entire Denver metro area. Yet the only mention of the fire was on page 28 of the Rocky Mountain News, underneath a photo of the Pet of the Week. In her early thirties, Iversen even worked at Rocky Flats for a time, typing up memos in which accidents were always called "incidents."And as this memoir unfolds, it reveals itself as a brilliant work of investigative journalism—a detailed and shocking account of the government's sustained attempt to conceal the effects of the toxic and radioactive waste released by Rocky Flats, and of local residents' vain attempts to seek justice in court. Here, too, are vivid portraits of former Rocky Flats workers—from the healthy, who regard their work at the plant with pride and patriotism, to the ill or dying, who battle for compensation for cancers they got on the job.Based on extensive interviews, FBI and EPA documents, and class-action testimony, this taut, beautifully written book promises to have a very long half-life.
Down the Santa Fe Trail and into Mexico: The Diary of Susan Shelby Magoffin, 1846-1847
Susan Shelby Magoffin - 1926
Her travel journal was written at a crucial time, when the Mexican War was beginning and New Mexico was occupied by Stephen Watts Kearny and the Army of the West. Her journal describes the excitement, routine, and dangers of a successful merchant's wife. On the trail for fifteen months, moving from house to house and town to town, she became adept in Spanish and the lingo of traders, and wrote down in detail the customs and appearances of places she went. She gave birth to her first child during the journey and admitted, "This thing of marrying is not what it is cracked up to be."Valuable as a social and historical record of her encounters—she met Zachary Taylor and was agreeably disappointed to find him disheveled but kindly—her journal is equally important as a chronicle of her growing intelligence, experience, and strength, her lost illusions and her coming to terms with herself.
Inventing Wyatt Earp: His Life and Many Legends
Allen Barra - 1998
This revelatory volume tells for the first time Earp’s entire astonishing story.
Oh What a Slaughter: Massacres in the American West 1846-1890
Larry McMurtry - 2005
Here are the true stories of the West's most terrible massacres -- Sacramento River, Mountain Meadows, Sand Creek, Marias River, Camp Grant, and Wounded Knee, among others. These massacres involved Americans killing Indians, but also Indians killing Americans, and, in the case of the hugely controversial Mountain Meadows Massacre in 1857, Mormons slaughtering a party of American settlers, including women and children.McMurtry's evocative descriptions of these events recall their full horror, and the deep, constant apprehension and dread endured by both pioneers and Indians. By modern standards the death tolls were often small -- Custer's famous defeat at Little Big Horn in 1876 was the only encounter to involve more than two hundred dead -- yet in the thinly populated West of that time, the violent extinction of a hundred people had a colossal impact on all sides. Though the perpetrators often went unpunished, many guilty and traumatized men felt compelled to tell and retell the horrors they had committed. From letters and diaries, McMurtry has created a moving and swiftly paced narrative, as memorable in its way as such classics as Evan S. Connell's "Son of the Morning Star" and Dee Brown's "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee."In Larry McMurtry's own words:"I have visited all but one of these famous massacre sites -- the Sacramento River massacre of 1846 is so forgotten that its site near the northern California village of Vina can only be approximated. It is no surprise to report that none of the sites are exactly pleasant places to be, though the Camp Grant site north of Tucson does have a pretty community college nearby. In general, the taint that followed the terror still lingers and is still powerful enough to affect locals who happen to live nearby. None of the massacres were effectively covered up, though the Sacramento River massacre was overlooked for a very long time."But the lesson, if it is a lesson, is that blood -- in time, and, often, not that much time -- will out. In case after case the dead have managed to assert a surprising potency."The deep, constant apprehension, which neither the pioneers nor the Indians escaped, has, it seems to me, been too seldom factored in by historians of the settlement era, though certainly it saturates the diary-literature of the pioneers, particularly the diary-literature produced by frontier women, who were, of course, the likeliest candidates for rapine and kidnap."