A Tale of Three Villages tracks the histories of three villages ancestrally linked to Chevak, a contemporary village in southwestern Alaska. Through an innovative interdisciplinary methodology that respectfully and creatively investigates the spatial and material past, the author convincingly demonstrates that, in order to understand colonial history, we must actively incorporate indigenous people as actors, not merely as reactors.

Bringing together both up-and-coming and well-known scholars of Chaco Canyon, Chaco Revisited provides readers with refreshing and updated analyses of research collected over the course of a century. Addressing age-old questions surrounding the canyon using new methods, contributors prove that Chaco Canyon was even more complex and fascinating than previously understood.

Sanctioning Matrimony provides a deep analysis of intermarriage in southern Arizona from 1860 to 1930. Sal Acosta utilizes vital records and census documents to demonstrate how interethnic relationships extended the racial fluidity of the Arizona borderlands.

In this important new collection of essays on the region, Stephen J. Pyne colorfully explores the ways the region has approached fire management. Florida has long resisted national models of fire suppression in favor of prescribed burning, for which it has ideal environmental conditions and a robust culture. Out of this heritage the fire community has created institutions to match. The Tallahassee region became the ignition point for the national fire revolution of the 1960s. Today, it remains the Silicon Valley of prescription burning. How and why this happened is the topic of a fire reconnaissance that begins in the panhandle and follows Floridian fire south to the Everglades.

In this collection of essays on the region, Stephen J. Pyne colorfully explores the ways the region has approached fire management and what sets it apart from other parts of the country. Pyne writes that what makes California’s fire scene unique is how its dramatically distinctive biomes have been yoked to a common system, ultimately committed to suppression, and how its fires burn with a character and on a scale commensurate with the state’s size and political power. California has not only a ferocity of flame but a cultural intensity that few places can match. California’s fires are instantly and hugely broadcast. They shape national institutions, and they have repeatedly defined the discourse of fire’s history. No other place has so sculpted the American way of fire.

The decolonial approaches found in Writing the Goodlife provide rich examples of mutually respectful relations between humans and nature. Ybarra’s book takes on two of today’s most discussed topics: environmentalism and Latina/o population growth. Ybarra shines a light on long-established traditions of environmental thought that have existed in Mexican American literary history for at least 150 years.

Political yet universal, Weaving the Boundary tells of love and betrayal, loss and forgiveness. Poet Karenne Wood intertwines important and otherwise untold stories and histories with a heightened sense of awareness of Native peoples’ issues and present realities.

A key way to view Latina plays today is through the foundational frame of playwright and teacher, Maria Irene Fornes, who has transformed American theatre. Considering Fornes’s legacy, Anne García-Romero shows how five award-winning playwrights continue to contest and complicate Latina theatre.

How Myth Became History emphasizes the heterogeneity of border communities and the foregrounding narratives often ignored, such as Mexican-indio histories. John E. Dean provides critical insight into the vexed status of the contemporary Texas-Mexico divide and points to broader implications for national and transnational identity.