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Nevada History
The first European expeditions to the Nevada
area were the Father Kino expeditions at the end of the 17th century.
Consequently, Nevada fell under Spanish control as part of the Viceroyalty
of New Spain.
When Mexico gained its independence from
Spain, the area then became part of
Mexico.
The United States gained control of the area following the Mexican-American
War (1846 to 1848), and in 1850 Congress established the Utah territory
which included the present-day state of Nevada.
On March 2nd
1861, the Nevada Territory was sepatated from the Utah Territory and adopted
its current name, inspired by the Spanish Sierra Nevada (snow range).
Nevada became the 36th state of te Union,
eight days prior to the presidential election of 1864.
Additional land was added to the state in 1866, taken from Arizona
Territory to the West of the Colorado River.
In the 19th century, Nevada's economy was dominated by mining. However,
when the industry declined, gambling was legalized in
1931
in an attempt to reinvigorate the economy. Since then, gambling has
remained the state's principle source of revenue right up to the present day.
The majority of land in the state (87%) is still owned by the Federal
government. This is because homesteads were not permitted in large enough
sizes to be viable in the arid conditions that are prevalent throughout the
state.
By John Muir Laws
Heyday Books
Paperback (366 pages)
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With more than 2,800 original watercolor illustrations, John Muir Laws has masterfully catalogued over 1,700 species of Sierra trees, wildflowers, ferns, fungi, lichens, fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds, mammals, insects, and other small animals. The guide is designed for quick and easy use in the field. Color tabs and a unique system of keys and organization assist in the quick identification of the living things encountered along the trail, while Laws s illustrations capture the feeling of plants and animals with detail critical for their classification. |
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By Christina Binkley
Hyperion
Released: 2008-03-04
Hardcover (320 pages)
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By Steve Fischer
Berkline Press
Released: 2005-07-07
Paperback (240 pages)
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Vegas like you've never seen, tales you've never heard -- until now. Sizzing, behind-the-scenes stories about the men, the Mob, movie stars, and missing money that made '50s and '60s Vegas such a hot spot in the Nevada desert. On opening night at the Cal-Neva Lodge, Sinatra's guests included Marilyn Monroe, Joe Kennedy and his son, John F. Kennedy. Also there that weekend were Johnny Roselli and Sam "Momo" Giancana. Uninvited and hiding up in the hills around the casino lodge was an FBI surveillance team with long-range lenses . . . From the chapter Frank Sinatras Cal-Neva Lodge "On Sept 22, 1953, the Riviera Hotel was approved, the name was changed from the Casa Blanca to the Riviera just before this meeting . . . and the list of newly approved owners included Harpo (Arthur) Marx, movie star, comedian; his brother, Gummo (Milton) Marx, comedian" . . . From the chapter Does the Riviera Still Kill Its Executives? The Tropicana partners included Rossellis bosses in Chicago: Sam Giancana, Paul Rica, Camel Humphries, Meyer Lansky, Frank Costello, and Carlos Marcello . . . Fronting for the Chicago Outfit was Ben Jaffe. He owned the giant Fountainbleu Hotel in Miami, and also owned a little insurance company in Indiana . . . From the chapter Frank Costello Builds the Tropicana "In every showroom in Las Vegas, there are certain inviolate rules. Rule Number One the headliners go for 60 minutes. Not 64. Those extra 4 minutes represent 4 minutes of lost revenue on the casino floor . . . Then Deano came out on stage with his signature, "Who are all you people, and what are you doing in my room?" and so started the two and a half hours of the Rat Pack Show!" From the chapter Coffee Shop Stories: Rat Pack and the Sands 21 stories packed with intrigue and mystery, a thoroughly research book, vintage photos. |
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By Laurence Yep
HarperTrophy
Released: 1995-03-31
Paperback (352 pages; 1)
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In 1867, Otter travels from Three Willows Village in China to California -- the Land of the Golden Mountain. There he will join his father and uncle. In spite of the presence of family, Otter is a stranger among the other Chinese in this new land. And where he expected to see a land of goldfields, he sees only vast, cold whiteness. But Otter's dream is to learn all he can, take the technology back to the Middle Kingdom, and free China from the Manchu invaders. Otter and the others board a machine that will change his life -- a train for which he would open the Dragon's Gate. |
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By Harry Reid
Putnam Adult
Hardcover (304 pages)
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One of the remarkable books of this season a tough, plainspoken, deeply passionate narrative by one of our most important national figures.
We all know them: politicians books that read as if theyve been cobbled together from old speeches. The Good Fight is as far from that as it is possible to get.
In a voice that is flinty, real, and passion-filled, Senator Harry Reid tells the tale of two places, intertwining his own story, particularly his early life of deep poverty in the tiny mining town of Searchlight, Nevadaa place that boasted of thirteen brothels and no churcheswith the cautionary tale of Washington, D.C.: If I can do nothing greater in this book than explain those two places to each other, then I will have done something important.
Reid is inspired by obstacles. Brought up in a cabin without indoor plumbing, he hitchhiked forty-five miles across open desert to high school. He worked full-time as a Capitol Hill policeman to get through law school, after the school refused him financial aid, telling him he wasnt cut out to be a lawyer. As head of the Nevada Gaming Commission, he led an unrelenting fight to clean up Las Vegas, despite four years of death threats and much worse. And in Congress, Reids spent more than twenty-five years battling those who would take the country in the wrong direction: The radical ideologues degrade our government, so much so that when they are in charge of it, they do not know how to run it.
And, always, it all comes back to Searchlight: Who I am now, and what I am doing now, began in that town, with those people, in those mines. This book is the story of a man who knows what a good fight is, because he has had to fight like hell for everything his whole life. It is populated by a rich and raucous cast of great and failed men, eccentrics, visionaries, gangsters, and presidents who make up his life and times. And it is for all those who not only like a good story, but wonder what we should do now in America. |
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By Ben Mezrich
Free Press
Released: 2002-09-18
Hardcover (272 pages)
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It's Friday night and you're on a red-eye to the city of sin. Strapped to your chest is half a million dollars; in your overnight bag is another twenty-five thousand in blackjack chips; and your wallet holds ten fake IDs. As soon as you land in Las Vegas, you are positive you are being investigated and followed. To top it all off, the IRS is auditing you, someone has been going through your mail -- and you have a multivariable calculus exam on Monday morning. Welcome to the world of an exclusive group of audacious MIT math geniuses who legally took the casinos for over three million dollars -- while still finding time for college keg parties, football games, and final exams.In the midst of the go-go eighties and nineties, a group of overachieving, anarchistic MIT students joined a decades-old underground blackjack club dedicated to counting cards and beating the system at major casinos around the world. While their classmates were working long hours in labs and libraries, the blackjack team traveled weekly to Las Vegas and other glamorous gambling locales, with hundreds of thousands of dollars duct-taped to their bodies. Underwritten by shady investors they would never meet, these kids bet fifty thousand dollars a hand, enjoyed VIP suites and other upscale treats, and partied with showgirls and celebrities. Handpicked by an eccentric mastermind -- a former MIT professor and an obsessive player who had developed a unique system of verbal cues, body signals, and role-playing -- this one ring of card savants earned more than three million dollars from corporate Vegas, making them the object of the casinos' wrath and eventually targets of revenge. Here is their inside story, revealing their secrets for the first time. Master storyteller Ben Mezrich takes you from the ivory towers of academia to the Technicolor world of Las Vegas, where anything can happen -- and often does. Bringing Down the House launches you into the seedy underworld of corporate Vegas -- deep into the realm of back rooms, ever-present video cameras, private investigators, and the threats and tactics of pit bosses and violent heavies. Equipped with twenty different aliases and disguises, the group of young card counters struggles around these roadblocks to live the high life -- until one fateful day when Vegas violently follows them home to Boston. Suddenly, there can be no more hiding behind false identities; the high life folds like a bad hand of cards. Filled with tense action and incredibly close calls, Bringing Down the House is a real-life mix of Liar's Poker and Ocean's Eleven -- and it's a story Vegas doesn't want you to read. |
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By A. Leo Nash
Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
Hardcover (160 pages)
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For one week in August the Burning Man Festival in Nevadas Black Rock Desert brings people together in a spirit of self-reliance and creativity. Art has become the defining feature of Burning Man, as the festival continues to be a testing ground for a growing circle of artists seeking engaged audiences. Their most compelling works are large-scale constructions that are burned at the end of the festival, and radically altered vehicles, or art cars.
Art at Burning Man, like the experience of being there itself, is a way of being outside routine existence: People return home rejuvenated and inspired to seek ways to express the spirit of the festival in their everyday lives. For more than a decade, A. Leo Nash has been creating a photographic document of this work, and in his photographs we see the wellspring of a new art movement. |
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By Su Kim Chung
Thunder Bay Press
Paperback (144 pages)
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Once upon a time, ‘Sin City’ attracted a different sort of visitor. Spanish explorers were the first to come to this desert oasis to enjoy its natural hot springs and named the spot Las Vegas, or ‘the meadows.’ Now just a century after it was founded in 1905, Las Vegas is the fastest growing metropolitan area in the US. See just how much has changed in Las Vegas Then & Now. Fascinating then-and-now photographs capture the city’s evolution from desert railroad outpost to the gambling and entertainment capital of the world.
Las Vegas remained a quiet, small town until 1931 when two events forever changed its course: the building of Hoover Dam and the legalization of gambling.
Photos from the 1940s illustrate the most dramatic development in the city with resort-style hotels and casinos popping up on the strip, including Bugsy Siegel’s Flamingo.
Fans of neon will enjoy views of “Glitter Gulch” — Fremont Street’s famed stretch — as it was in the glory years of the 50s and as it is today.
Includes ‘now’ photos taken in September 2006 and the most up-to-date information about casino closures and new projects slated for 2006/2007. |
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By NATIONAL AUDUBON SOCIETY
Knopf
Released: 1999-09-21
Turtleback (448 pages)
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Filled with concise descriptions and stunning photographs, the National Audubon Society Field Guide to the Southwestern States belongs in the home of every resident of the Southwest and in the suitcase or backpack of every visitor. This compact volume contains:
An easy-to-use field guide for identifying 1,000 of the state's wildflowers, trees, mushrooms, mosses, fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, butterflies, mammals, and much more;
A complete overview of the southwestern region's natural history, covering geology, wildlife habitats, ecology, fossils, rocks and minerals, clouds and weather patterns, and the night sky;
An extensive sampling of the area's best parks, preserves, mountains, forests, and wildlife sanctuaries, with detailed descriptions and visitor information for 50 sites and notes on dozens of others.
The guide is packed with visual information -- the 1,500 full-color images include more than 1,300 photographs, 9 maps, and 16 night-sky charts, as well as more than 100 drawings explaining everything from geological processes to the basic features of different plants and animals.
For everyone who lives or spends time in Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, or Utah, there can be no finer guide to the area's natural surroundings than the National Audubon Society Field Guide to the Southwestern States. |
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By Jessica Bruder
Simon Spotlight Entertainment
Hardcover (368 pages)
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It all began in 1986 when a pair of friends burned an eight-foot-tall effigy on Baker Beach in San Francisco in front of an impromptu audience of twenty. Two decades later Burning Man has evolved intoa dazzling annual extravaganza dedicated to radical self-reliance and radical self-expression, attracting nearly forty thousand people. These revelers -- an eclectic mix of punks, geeks, families, ravers, grad students, gearheads, hippies, and tourists -- turn the ancient lakebed of Nevada's Black Rock Desert into a bustling city that exists for one glorious week before disappearing in a cloud of ashes and dust.Burning Book is both a loving commemoration of the event's storied history and an enlightening companion for festivalgoers. Bruder explores the unique ethos and breathtaking art installations that have shaped the event, along with Black Rock City's distinctive landmarks, pranks, lore, and gift-based economy. Illustrated with more than three hundred stunning photographs, Burning Book is a striking tribute to an extraordinary cultural phenomenon for the legions who participate in Burning Man every year, and for those who haven't become part of this unforgettable celebration -- yet. |
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