Featured books
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Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. 1st, signed.
Larry McMurtry, in books like The Last Picture Show, has depicted the modern degeneration of the myth of the American West. The subject of Lonesome Dove, cowboys herding cattle on a great trail-drive, seems like the very stuff of that cliched myth, but McMurtry bravely tackles the task of creating meaningful literature out of it. At first the novel seems the kind of anti-mythic, anti-heroic story one might expect: the main protagonists are a drunken and inarticulate pair of former Texas Rangers turned horse rustlers. Yet when the trail begins, the story picks up an energy and a drive that makes heroes of these men. Their mission may be historically insignificant, or pointless--McMurtry is smart enough to address both possibilities--but there is an undoubted valor in their lives. The result is a historically aware, intelligent, romantic novel of the mythic west that won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. |
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Hidden Scholars: Women Anthropologists and the Native American Southwest
Edited by Nancy Parezo |
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19th Century Art by Rosenblum and Janson
Appropriate for Art majors. Originally published twenty years ago, Nineteenth Century Art, Second Edition remains true to the original, with its superior survey of Western painting and sculpture presented in four historical parts, beginning in 1776 and ending with the dawn of the new century. This text draws on the historical documentation of the period, tracing the dynamics of the making and viewing of art, and examining the reciprocal influences of art and technology, art and politics, art and literature, art and music. |
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Not confined to sea battles, Toll's history of the U.S. Navy's formative decades, from the mid-1790s to the War of 1812, rounds out affairs by anchoring the nascent navy to its financial supports. Navies are not inexpensive, and the costs of building and maintaining ships appear lightly but persistently in Toll's narrative. It centers on the first vessels purpose-built for the navy, the half-dozen frigates of which the USSConstitution moored in Boston today is the last survivor. Besides money, their construction involved politics; the Federalists favored the naval program (creating the Department of the Navy in 1798), while Jefferson's parsimonious Republicans were more diffident. Toll is as insightful about the essential domestic and diplomatic background as he is with his dramatizations of the naval engagements of the new navy, which produced a crop of national heroes such as Stephen Decatur. The maritime strategy and the highly developed sense of officers' honor, which influenced where particular battles occurred, emerge clearly in this fluent account. Vibrant and comprehensive, Toll makes an impressive debut. |
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Cook & Peary: The Polar Controversy, Resolved, byRobert M. Bryce
On September 1, 1909, Frederick A. Cook announced that he had reached the North Pole. Five days later Commander Robert E. Peary claimed the honor. Through his completely documented research, author Robert Bryce reconstructs events and presents the explorers, their motivations, and their accomplishments in their own words and in the words of their contemporaries. 125 photos. |
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