In the words of literary luminaries, newspaper articles, public documents, personal letters, political speeches and personal accounts this is an attempt to define Nevada's colorful and complex development. It describes life in a mining boomtown, racial segregation in Las Vegas, political careers and atomic testing whilst through photographs we are shown significant Nevada architecture, the masterpieces of renowned Paiute basketmaker Dat-so-la-lee and tree carvings by sheepherders. The collection ranges from the earliest descriptions of the region to the current debate on Yucca Mountain.

The Red scare of the 1950s created a national crisis that challenged concepts of loyalty and freedom of speech in every corner of American society. The crisis was especially problematic in American universities where traditions of academic freedom found themselves at odds with political issues stemming from the Cold War. The University of Nevada in Reno was no exception. students) school offering basic programs to a largely Nevada-based student body in the nation's least-populated state. The campus was quiet, secure traditional and generally conservative. The postwar years brought booming...

Since Las Vegas was founded on May 15, 1905, when the Union Pacific auctioned off land around its new railroad shops, the city has grown from a ramshackle village to a sprawling metropolitan area of well over a million people. Such phenomenal growth was never a sure thing--in its first decades, the town languished as a railroad company town and market center for nearby ranches and mines. The construction of Hoover Dam in the 1930s brought thousands of workers, some of whom decided to stay, and World War II and the Cold War brought others, including military personnel and workers at the Nevada...

Las Vegas is known the world over as an oasis of entertainment in the Nevada desert, but to more than a million people of exceptionally varied origins, it is also home. Yet this city is rarely mentioned in studies of ethnicity or immigration, and the rich diversity of its population is largely invisible to Las Vegans and visitors alike. Such ignorance can be partly explained by the effects of the city's rapid growth. Las Vegas largely lacks traditional ethnic neighborhoods, and the restaurants and markets that cater to its diverse population groups are mostly hidden away in anonymous strip...

Boomtown Saloons was heralded upon its publication as a groundbreaking book on the historical archaeology of the Old West. Its account of the excavation and analysis of four nineteenth-century Virginia City, Nevada, saloon sites offers a provocative new interpretation of the role of saloons in a mining boomtown. Dixon, who participated in the excavation projects, discusses the meticulous work of the modern archaeologist and the technologies involved in analyzing evidence, and what these discoveries tell us about Virginia City's people and their social habits. Contrary to the image,...

Devils Will Reign, available now for the first time in paperback, recounts the momentous early history of Nevada before it became a state in 1864. Sally Zanjani weaves the exciting saga of this rowdy frontier and its colorful characters into the larger story of those eventful years--the discovery of gold in California and silver in the Nevada Territory; the debate over slavery and the Civil War that made the fate of the Far West a matter of congressional concern; and the Mormon establishment in Utah that prompted national suspicion of the sect's ambitions for an inland empire. In this...

The book is the first comprehensive documented study of Jews in Nevada from 1850 to the present. It details their involvement in the development and fostering of the state's earliest settlements and its social and political institutions. Among the themes are: antisemitism, Jewish participation in civil rights initiatives, and the explosive growth of Jewry in the Las Vegas metropolitan area along with the development of an expanding Jewish cultural infrastructure. It includes victimized peddlers and modern millionaires, heroines and exploiters, underworld figures and philanthropists, as well...