This book offers a unique look at a little-known aspect of immigrant culture in California and Nevada during the first half of the twentieth century. The years 1920 to 1950 represented the high point of the sheep industry in the western U.S. The mountain meadows of the Sierra Nevada were an important source of summer forage, and Basque sheepherders, many recently arrived from the Pyrenees, were primarily responsible for tending the flocks.The shepherd's life among the aspen groves was isolated and solitary, and it led many herders to utilize the trees as a means of self-expression. Using simple tools such as pocket knives or nails, the herders turned to the white bark of the aspens. On this living canvas, they etched a remarkable series of carvings, recording everything from their own names to observations of the natural world around them, memories of the Basque Country, and not surprisingly, erotic fantasies. Over time, the living and perishable nature of the medium subtly altered the sheepherders work, and eventually doomed it. Most of the carvings are now lost.

Basque Aspen Art of the Sierra Nevada

Arts & Photography

Earl, Jean Moore

Earl, Phillip

History & Criticism

Baobab Press

Take one long-married and occasionally exasperated couple getting along in years, their well meaning daughter and precocious grandson, a clueless dog, an independent minded cat, plus assorted other quirky but endearing characters and you have the world of Pickles, Brian Crane's beloved comic strip that takes a wiry but good-natured look at the foibles of family and friends.

How Come I Always Get Blamed for the Things I Do?: A Pickles Collection

Comics & Graphic Novels

Crane, Brian

Comic Strips

The sonnet is one of the oldest poetic forms in Western literature, adopted with immortal success by poets as diverse as Dante, Shakespeare, and Robert Frost. In the hands of William Wilborn, the sonnet becomes a powerful vehicle to explore the poignant ironies of history and daily life, the urgencies of love and age, and the heartbreaking truths that lurk behind encounters with art and beauty. These masterfully crafted poems give the ancient sonnet a fresh vibrancy and relevance suitable for the voices and experiences of our time.The range of Wilborn’s poetic scrutiny is vast, from Anne Frank,up in her attic, working late,To finish knowing why she had been there,Before she heard the jackboots on the stairto the pain of euthanizing a beloved dog:We live too long for love of our own kind,And you too briefly for our endless needand the stoic courage of an old man whofishes in green gabardineStill waters with a heedful hook.Wilborn is a mature and wise poet, fearlessly fishing in the waters of modern life to retrieve the evasive moments that define the human condition.

All She Wrote: Sonnets

Literature & Fiction

Wilborn, William

Poetry

Getting old is not for sissies. But as Brian Crane’s crotchety but endearing seniors Earl and Opal Pickles do it, it can be humorous and often touching. For over twenty years, Crane’s comic strip, Pickles, has been delighting readers around the world. This sixth collection continues the adventures of grandparents Earl and Opal; their precocious grandson, Nelson; quirky family members and friends; and the family’s dog and cat, who offer their own distinctive views of the goings-on. Crane’s view of the foibles of a long-married, often cantankerous couple and their extended family and friends is wry, honest, and always warmhearted.

Oh, Sure! Blame It on the Dog!: A Pickles Collection

Roger Arthur Smith’s spectacular debut, Echoes, asks, what happens when your fundamental nature is challenged, not by the many evils without, but by an unexpected awakening within?It’s 1960 in Hawthorne, Nevada, a desert town so secluded that the U.S. Navy stores munitions nearby. While the Cold war lumbers on, the town’s gossip mills and marriage-eligible bachelors and bachelorettes play a game of cat and mouse, a pastime, that if nothing else, manages to while away the hours. Attorney Will Dubykky keeps a watchful eye over Hawthorne, and it comes as no surprise that his interest is piqued by the sudden appearance of a strange boy. Why is this boy disfigured? Why does he have difficulty speaking? Why can’t some people seem to see him? As one of the initiated, Dubykky has an inkling; the boy is evil, an echo sent to rectify the wrongs of an indulgent murderer. The echo’s mission? Tempt, trap and eliminate the human monster that spawned it. If all goes according to evil’s intent, the echo will die fulfilling its destiny. This fatal sequence has persisted as long as evil itself, but before the dark circle can be closed, riddles must be solved. In a town this small, who is capable of committing a string of heinous crimes undetected? And, when the time comes will this echo, more naïve and innocent than any echo Dubykky has ever encountered, fulfill its gruesome destiny? Echoes, is a wildly entertaining, gloriously absorbing exploration of humanity, evil, and the stark environs in which both exist.

Echoes (Echoes, 1)

Smith, Roger Arthur

United States

Getting old is not for sissies. But as Brian Crane’s crotchety but endearing seniors Earl and Opal Pickles do it, it can be humorous and often touching. For over twenty-five years, Crane’s comic strip, Pickles, has been delighting readers around the world. This seventh collection continues the adventures of grandparents Earl and Opal; their precocious grandson, Nelson; quirky family members and friends; and the family’s dog and cat, who offer their own distinctive views of the goings-on. Crane’s view of the foibles of a long-married, often cantankerous couple and their extended family and friends is wry, honest, and always warm-hearted.

25 Years of Pickles

<div>The days are cold. Winter is coming fast to the Nevada Mountains. The white ducks need a warm spot to sleep; so does the old mountain lion. Like children who want to snuggle with their moms the ducks find a purrrfect spot to sleep. And the old mountain lion gains something he never had before.</div>

Ducks Ducks

Children's Books

Animals

Nevada Grown: A Year in Local Food is a celebration of Nevada's thriving food culture and an invitation to discover how rich and diverse the bountiful harvest Nevada's hardworking and talented farmers deliver. We invite you to source your ingredients from local farms to find out how delicious turnips and beets are when they're young, tender, and fresh from the field. Rediscover the taste of beef and pork raised on local ranches. Relish the flavor and freshness of locally produced eggs and honey. Try Nevada-grown dates and pistachios. See why Fallon cantaloupe is considered the best in the nation. Delight in kohlrabi cakes, sorrel soup, and kale salad. Be brave and add sunchokes and fennel to your farmers market list. But most of all, enjoy your culinary journey around our state.

Nevada Grown: A Year in Local Food

NevadaGrown

Photography & Video

Two families immigrate to America’s Steel Valley and open a trucking motel and laundry. The businesses change hands through three generations as the region’s industry booms and busts. When the two disparate families become one, the new generation must examine what it means to endure in a place, a culture, a language, and a history. Line Study of a Motel Clerk examines a family’s century-long effort to make a home in a world on the move.

Line Study of a Motel Clerk (Red Ochre)

Pitinii Davis, Allison

Tad Fellows is an American graduate student working on an archaeological dig in rural England. He is also a wounded veteran of the Afghanistan war, where he found purpose and identity as a cog in the vast military machine of the U.S. Army. A quiet man prone to unexplained blackouts, guided and comforted by the stoic advice of Roman philosopher Marcus Aurelius, Tad is intent on doing what he now believes is his destined role―protecting the dig and its artifacts, including the mummified corpse of a Roman soldier. The dig completed, Tad is assigned to catalogue its artifacts in the cellar of a Cambridge museum. At ease in the world only when he is surrounded by the detritus of the past, Tad believes himself content. Instead, he finds himself at the center of a maelstrom where academic rivalries, international politics, the stultifying English class system, and his own awkward foray into love leave him bewildered and more alone than ever. Marcus’s wisdom no longer suffices, and a series of devastating betrayals drive Tad deeper into his own dark world, toward a cataclysmic climax. Novelist Bernard Schopen is at the top of his form in this gripping, perceptive account of a misfit struggling to hold fast to ancient values of loyalty and duty in a world where little is as it seems and only the past can be trusted.

The Last Centurion

Schopen, Bernard

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