The University of Arizona Press is the premier publisher of academic, regional, and literary works in the state of Arizona. They disseminate ideas and knowledge of lasting value that enrich understanding, inspire curiosity, and enlighten readers. They advance the University of Arizona’s mission by connecting scholarship and creative expression to readers worldwide.
Ancient Maya Life in the Far West Bajo
Social and Environmental Change in the Wetlands of Belize
Working Women in Mexico City
Public Discourses and Material Conditions, 1879-1931
Speak to Me Words
Essays on Contemporary American Indian Poetry
Heterarchy, Political Economy, and the Ancient Maya
The Three Rivers Region of the East-Central Yucatán Peninsula
Chiricahua Mountains
Bridging the Borders of Wildness
Blanket Weaving in the Southwest
Arizona's War Town
Few American towns went untouched by World War II, even those in remote corners of the country. During that era, the federal government forever changed the lives of many northern Arizona citizens with the construction of the U.S. Army ordnance depot at Bellemont, ten miles west of Flagstaff. John Westerlund now tells how this ...
Writing on the Edge
A Borderlands Reader
The Return of the Mexican Gray Wolf
The return of the Mexican gray wolf to Arizona's Blue Range in 1998 marked more than a victory for an endangered species. Long hated by ranchers, the gray wolf had been hunted to the brink of extinction until one woman took on the challenge of restoring it to its natural habitat. Inspired by the plight of the Mexican gray wolf, retiree Bobbie Holaday formed the citizens advocacy group Preserve Arizona's Wolves (P.A.WS.) in 1987 and embarked on a crusade to raise public awareness. She soon found herself in the center of a firestorm of controversy, with environmentalists taking sides against ranchers and neighbors against neighbors. This book tells her story for the first time, documenting her eleven-year effort to bring the gray wolf back to the Blue.
As Holaday quickly learned, ranchers exerted considerable control over the state legislature, and politicians in turn controlled decisions made by wildlife agencies. Even though the wolf had been listed as endangered since 1976, opposition to it was so strong that the Arizona Game and Fish Department had been unable to launch a recovery program. In The Return of the Mexican Gray Wolf, Holaday describes first-hand the tactics she and other ordinary citizens on the Mexican Wolf Recovery Team adopted to confront these obstacles. Enhanced with more than 40 photographs32 in colorher account chronicles both the triumphs of reintroduction and the heartbreaking tragedies the wolves encountered during early phases.
Thanks to Holaday's perseverance, eleven wolves were released into the wild in 1998, and the Blue Range once again echoed with their howls. Her tenacity was an inspiration to all those she enlisted in the cause, and her story is a virtual primer for conservation activists on mobilizing at the grassroots level. The Return of the Mexican Gray Wolf shows that one person can make a difference in a seemingly hopeless cause and will engage all readers concerned with the preservation of wildlife.
All royalties go to the Mexican Wolf Trust Fund administered by the Arizona Game and Fish Department.
Militarism, Ethnicity, and Politics in the Sierra Norte de Puebla, 1917-1930
The Changing Mile Revisited
An Ecological Study of Vegetation Change with Time in the Lower Mile of an Arid and Semiarid Region
Sharing the Desert
The Tohono O'odham in History
Arizona Goes to War
The Home Front and the Front Lines during World War II
Smokechasing
"Painting, architecture, politics, even gardening and golfall have their critics and commentators," observes Stephen Pyne. "Fire does not." Aside from news reports on fire disasters, most writing about fire appears in government reports and scientific papersand in journalism that has more in common with the sports page than the editorial page. Smokechasing presents commentaries by one of America's leading fire scholars, who analyzes fire the way another might an election campaign or a literary work.
"Smokechasing" is an American coinage describing the practice of sending firefighters into the wild to track down the source of reported smoke. Now a self-described "friendly fire critic" tracks down more of the history and lore of fire in a collection that focuses on wildland fire and its management. Building on and complementing a previous anthology, World Fire, this new collection features thirty-two original articles and substantial revisions of works that have previously appeared in print.
Pyne addresses many issues that have sparked public concern in the wake of disastrous wildfires in the West, such as fire ecology, federal fire management, and questions relating to fire suppression. He observes that the mistake in fire policy has been not that wildfires are suppressed but that controlled fires are no longer ignited; yet the attempted forced reintroduction of fire through prescribed burning has proved difficult, and sometimes damaging. There are, Pyne argues, many fire problems; some have technical solutions, some not. But there is no evading humanity's unique power and responsibility: what we don't do may be as ecologically powerful as what we do.
Throughout the collection, Pyne makes it clear that humans and fire interact at particular places and times to profoundly shape the world, and that understanding the contexts in which fire occurs can tell us much about the world's natural and cultural landscapes. Fire's context gives it its meaning, and Smokechasing not only helps illuminate those contexts but also shows us how to devise new contexts for tomorrow's fires.
Naked Wanting
Fuel for Growth
Cities in the arid West would not be what they are today without water and the technology needed to deliver it to users. The history of water development in Arizona goes hand in hand with the state's economic growth, and Arizona's future is inextricably tied to this scarce resource. Fuel for Growth describes and interprets the history of water resource development and its relationship to urban development in Arizona's three signature cities: Phoenix, Tucson, and Flagstaff. These three urban areas could hardly be more different: a growth-oriented metropolis, an environmentally conscious city with deep cultural roots, and an outdoor-friendly mountain town. Despite these differences, their community leaders and public officials have taken similar approaches to developing water resources with varying degrees of success and acceptance. Douglas Kupel has created a new vision of water history based on the Arizona experience. He challenges many of the traditional assumptions of environmental history by revealing that the West's aridity has had relatively little impact on the development of municipal water infrastructure in these cities. While urban growth in the West is often characterized as the product of an elite group of water leaders, the development of Arizona's cities is shown to reflect the broad aspirations of all their citizens. The book traces water development from the era of private water service to municipal ownership of water utilities and examines the impact of the post-World War II boom and subsequent expansion. Taking in the Salt River Project, the Central Arizona Project, and the Groundwater Management Act of 1980, Kupel explores the ongoing struggle between growth and environmentalism. He advocates public policy measures that can sustain a water future for the state. As the urban West enters a new century of water management, Arizona's progress will increasingly be tied to that of its ever-expanding cities. Fuel for Growth documents an earlier era of urban water use and provides important recommendations for the future path of water development in the West's key population centers.
A Scattering of Jades
Stories, Poems, and Prayers of the Aztecs
Barren, Wild, and Worthless
Living in the Chihuahuan Desert
Changing Precipitation Regimes and Terrestrial Ecosystems
A North American Perspective
The Environmental Justice Reader
Politics, Poetics, and Pedagogy
Floods, Droughts, and Climate Change
The Lost Itinerary of Frank Hamilton Cushing
Native Waters
Since the beginning of the reservation era, the bitter conflict between Indians and non-Indians over water rights was largely confined to the courtroom. But in the 1980s the federal government began to emphasize negotiated settlements over lawsuits, and the settlements are changing water rights in fundamental waysnot only for tribes but also for non-Indian communities that share scarce water resources with Indians.
In Native Waters, Daniel McCool describes the dramatic impact these settlements are having both on Indian country and on the American West as a whole. Viewing the settlements as a second treaty era, he considers whether they will guarantee the water future of reservationsor, like treaties of old, will require tribes to surrender vast resources in order to retain a small part of their traditional homelands. As one tribal official observed, "It's like your neighbors have been stealing your horses for many years, and now we have to sit down and decide how many of those horses they get to keep." Unlike technical studies of water policy, McCool's book is a readable account that shows us real people attempting to end real disputes that have been going on for decades. He discusses specific water settlements using a combination of approachesfrom personal testimony to traditional social science methodologyto capture the richness, complexity, and human texture of the water rights conflict. By explaining the processes and outcomes in plain language and grounding his presentation in relevant explanations of Indian culture, he conveys the complexity of the settlements for readers from a wide range of disciplines.
Native Waters illustrates how America is coming to grips with an issue that has long been characterized by injustice and conflict, seeking to enhance our understanding of the settlements in the hope that this understanding will lead to better settlements for all parties. As one of the first assessments of a policy that will have a pervasive impact for centuries to come, it shows that how we resolve Indian water claims tells us a great deal about who we are as a nation and how we confront difficult issues involving race, culture, and the environment.