Books, Biographies & Memoirs, Regional U.S., West

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Jon Krakauer
Into the Wild
by Anchor (Paperback) (Release Date: 2007-08-21)

Frances Dinkelspiel
Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California
by St. Martin's Press (Hardcover) (Release Date: 2008-11-11)

Isaias Hellman, a Jewish immigrant, arrived in California in 1859 with very little money in his pocket and his brother Herman by his side.  By the time he died, he had effectively transformed Los Angeles into the modern metropolis we see today.  In Frances Dinkelspiel's groundbreaking history, the early days of California are seen through the life of a man who started out as a simple store owner only to become California's premier money-man of the late 19th and early 20th century. Growing up as a young immigrant, Hellman quickly learned the use to which "capital" could be put, founding LA's Farmers and Merchants Bank, that city's first successful bank, and transforming Wells Fargo into one of the West's biggest financial institutions. He invested money with Henry Huntington to build trolley lines, lent Edward Doheney the funds that led him to discover California's huge oil reserves, and assisted Harrison Gary Otis in acquiring full ownership of the Los Angeles Times.  Hellman ...

Ralph Moody
Little Britches: Father and I Were Ranchers
by Bison Books (Paperback)

Ralph Moody was eight years old in 1906 when his family moved from New Hampshire to a Colorado ranch. Through his eyes we experience the pleasures and perils of ranching there early in the twentieth century. Auctions and roundups, family picnics, irrigation wars, tornadoes and wind storms give authentic color to Little Britches. So do adventures, wonderfully told, that equip Ralph to take his father's place when it becomes necessary. Little Britches was the literary debut of Ralph Moody, who wrote about the adventures of his family in eight glorious books, all available as Bison Books.

Luis J. Rodriguez
Always Running: LA Vida Loca : Gang Days in L. A.
by Topeka Bindery (School & Library Binding)

By age twelve, Luis Rodriguez was a veteran of East L.A. gang warfare. Lured by a seemingly invincible gang culture, he witnessed countless shootings, beatings, and arrests, then watched with increasing fear as drugs, murder, suicide, and senseless acts of street crime claimed friends and family members. Before long Rodriguez saw a way out of the barrio through education and the power of words, and successfully broke free from years of violence and desperation. Achieving success as an award-winning Chicano poet, he was sure the streets would haunt him no more -- until his young son joined a gang. Rodriguez fought for his child by telling his own story in Always Running, a vivid memoir that explores the motivations of gang life and cautions against the death and destruction that inevitably claim its participants. At times heartbreakingly sad and brutal, Always Running is ultimately an uplifting true story, filled with hope, insight, and a hard-earned lesson for the next generation.

Ivan Doig
This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind
by Mariner Books (Paperback)

This work introduced a major modern author to the reading public. Doig’s life was formed among the sheepherders and other denizens of small-town saloons and valley ranches as he wandered beside his restless father. New Preface by the Author.

Lauren Kessler
Stubborn Twig: Three Generations in the Life of a Japanese American Family (Oregon Reads)
by Oregon State University (Paperback)

Stubborn Twig is a classic American story, a story of immigrants making their way in a new land. It is a living work of social history that rings with the power of truth and the drama of fiction, a moving saga about the challenges of becoming an American. Masuo Yasui traveled from Japan across the other Oregon Trail—the one that spanned the Pacific Ocean—in 1903. Like most immigrants, he came with big dreams and empty pockets. Working on the railroads, in a cannery, and as a houseboy before settling in Hood River, Oregon, he opened a store, raised a large family, and became one of the area’s most successful orchardists.As Masuo broke the race barrier in the local business community, his American-born children broke it in school, scouts and sports, excelling in most everything they tried. For the Yasuis’ first-born son, the constraints and contradictions of being both Japanese and American led to tragedy. But his seven brothers and sisters prevailed, becoming doctors, ...

Dan Rottenberg
Death of a Gunfighter: The Quest for Jack Slade, The West's Most Elusive Legend
by Westholme Publishing (Hardcover)

The Truth Behind the Tragic Hero Who Helped Save the Union and Created the Myth of the American Gunslinger "There was such magic in that name, SLADE! I stood always ready to drop any subject in hand, to listen to something new about Slade. . . . Slade was at once the most bloody, the most dangerous and the most valuable citizen that inhabited the savage fastnesses of the mountains."--Mark Twain, Roughing It In 1859, as the United States careened toward civil war, Washington's only northern link with America's richest state, California, was a stagecoach line operating between Missouri and the Pacific. Yet the stage line was plagued by outlaws and hostile Indians. At this critical moment, the company enlisted a former wagon train captain to clean up its most dangerous division. Over the next three years, Jack Slade exceeded his employers' wildest dreams, capturing bandits and horse thieves and driving away gangs. He kept the stagecoaches and the U.S. Mail running, and helped ...

Kathleen Norris
Dakota: A Spiritual Geography
by Mariner Books (Paperback)

Heather Lende
If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name: News from Small-Town Alaska
by Algonquin Books (Paperback)

Tiny Haines, Alaska, ninety miles north of Juneau, is accessible mainly by water or air—and only when the weather is good. There’s no traffic light and no mail delivery; people can vanish without a trace; and funerals are community affairs. As both obituary writer and social columnist for the local newspaper, Heather Lende knows better than anyone the goings-on in this breathtakingly beautiful place. Her offbeat chronicle brings us inside her busy life: we meet her husband, Chip, who owns the local hardware store; their five children; and a colorful assortment of friends and offbeat neighbors, including aging hippies, salty fishermen, native Tlingit Indians, Mormon spelunkers . . . as well as the moose, eagles, sea lions, and bears with whom they share this wild and perilous land.

Norma Cobb, Charles W. Sasser, Charles Sasser
Arctic Homestead: The True Story of One Family's Survival and Courage in the Alaskan Wilds
by St. Martin's Griffin (Paperback)

In 1973, Norma Cobb, her husband Lester, and their five child-ren, the oldest of whom was nine years old and the youngest, twins, barely one, pulled up stakes in the Lower 48 and headed north to Alaska to follow a pioneer dream of claiming land under the Homestead Act. The only land available lay north of Fair-banks near the Arctic Circle where grizzlies outnumbered humans twenty to one. In addition to fierce winters and predatory ani-mals, the Alaskan frontier also drew society's more unsavory human elements. But through it all, the family survived on the strength of Norma Cobb-a woman whose love for her family knew no bounds and whose courage in the face of mortal danger is an inspiration.

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