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.

Poetry of Resistance offers a poetic call for tolerance, reflection, reconciliation, and healing. Bringing together more than eighty writers, the anthology powerfully articulates the need for change and the primacy of basic human rights.

American Indian musicians have been innovators in virtually all popular forms of music—jazz, blues, country-western, rock and roll, reggae, punk, and hip-hop. In fact, some of the United States’ most prominent musicians have been American Indians. Yet for too long their contributions have been invisible to the public. This book showcases the range of musical genres to which Native musicians have contributed and the unique ways in which their engagement advances the struggle for justice and continues age-old traditions of creative expression.

An extensively documented chronicle of the rise and fall of individual mines, companies, and regions, Copper for America will prove an essential resource for economic and business historians, historians of technology and mining, and western historians.