Special Collections added the following 11 titles to ASC's holdings during the second quarter of 2024. The list is a sample of purchased and donated publications and while not exhaustive, is meant to highlight recent acquisitions. For a full list of Special Collections titles, please search PRIMO, the library’s catalog.

Cover ArtAmerican Covenant: National Parks, Their Promise, and Our Nation's Future by Michael A. Soukup and Gary E. Machlis

Call Number: Branson Library, Special Collections - Non-circulating SB482.A4 S68 2021
ISBN: 9780300140354
Publication Date: 2021-03-23
Part memoir, part critique, and paean to the value of national parks, American Covenant distills the experience and insights from two long careers in conservation. Michael A. Soukup and Gary E. Machlis show how the national parks are essential to maintaining the essence of our national heritage, and key to America's future in a changing climate and political landscape. Sharing real-world examples of both victories and defeats in protecting national parks, this candid, thoughtful book reminds us that the national parks are a promise--a covenant--within and between generations of Americans. The book is also a call to revitalize, reconstitute, reconfigure, and reform the National Park Service, which the authors believe is governed too much by ad hoc management practices and politics instead of a foundation of expertise and science.
 

Cover ArtAmerican Indians As Depicted on Song Sheet Covers Since 1833 by Frank D. Tinari

Call Number: Branson Library, Special Collections - Non-circulating ML112.5 .T55 2024
ISBN: 9781632933867
Publication Date: 2024-03-15
Bridging the genres of music, art illustration, collectible song sheets, Native American history and American popular culture, this book is definitive in its scope and coverage. It is the first comprehensive guide to American Indian images featured on over 700 colorful song sheet covers. Its preface discusses the art and history of sheet music publishing and gives due recognition to earlier authors and books in the field. The introduction addresses the American public's views of American Indians and the extent to which those views were reflected in popular illustrated sheet music of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The book presents song sheets in their historical context, incorporating insights of experts on American Indians and sheet music. Many of the song sheet descriptions include commentaries touching on history, American culture and popular illustration. As such, the book will be of interest to sheet music collectors, scholars of Native Americans, art historians, students of American cultural history, musicologists, and fans of illustrative art. It includes a Comprehensive Annotated Bibliography of Sheet Music Books and a Listing of Illustrators of American Indian Song Sheets. Always engaging, informative and clearly presented, readers will find the book a delight to read.
 

Cover ArtBlurred Boundaries: Perspectives on Rock Art of the Greater Southwest by William Frej

Call Number: Branson Library, Special Collections - Non-circulating E78.S7 F755 2023
ISBN: 9780890136799
Publication Date: 2023-10-15
Enigmatic rock art featuring a myriad of symbols and designs can be found throughout remote and arid landscapes of the Greater Southwest, from the Four Corners region of the American West to the Baja California peninsula in Mexico. This vast gallery of ancient art offers intriguing questions. Who created these images on stone and what were their motivations? What do they mean? Are they to be taken literally or might they stand for something else? In this book, William Frej's powerful black and white photographs of rock art in the American Southwest and Baja California provide the opportunity to explore this diverse and mysterious imagery--and to ponder these questions. By framing these images on stone by the expansive landscapes in which they are found, his photographs emphasize the importance of their settings. The accompanying photo captions by noted rock art scholar Polly Schaafsma present clues to the symbolic content of these stone murals. Her essay, "Blurred Boundaries," addresses the ambiguities latent in their complex meanings. To illustrate, Schaafsma addresses several elements of the visual vocabulary of rock art in the region-the spiral, stepped clouds, depictions of the human form, animals, and shields. Schaafsma notes that rock art can be viewed from many perspectives and she suggests that we move beyond Western philosophy to consider an animistic universe in which all things are sacred. In the foreword Frank Graziano also emphasizes how our own beliefs and perceptions influence the way we experience rock art. Rock art is more than a static reminder of the faraway past. The images continue to impact us even today, no matter what our perspective.
 

Cover ArtBorder Water: The Politics of U.S.-Mexico Transboundary Water Management, 1945-2015 by Stephen P. Mumme

Call Number: Branson Library, Special Collections - Non-circulating HD1694.A3 M66 2023
ISBN: 9780816548316
Publication Date: 2023-03-21
The international boundary between the United States and Mexico spans more than 1,900 miles. Along much of this international border, water is what separates one country from the other. Border Water provides a historical account of the development of governance related to transboundary and border water resources between the United States and Mexico in the last seventy years. This work examines the phases and pivot points in the development of U.S.-Mexico border water resources and reviews the theoretical approaches and explanation that impart a better understanding of these events. Author Stephen Paul Mumme, a leading expert in water policy and border studies, describes three important periods in the chronology of transboundary water management. First, Mumme examines the 1944 Water Treaty, the establishment of the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) in 1945, and early transborder politics between the two governments. Next, he describes the early 1970s and the rise of environmentalism. In this period, pollution and salinization of the Colorado River Delta come into focus. Mumme shows how new actors, now including environmentalists and municipalities, broadened and strengthened the treaty's applications in transboundary water management. The third period of transborder interaction described covers the opening and restricting of borders due to NAFTA and then 9/11. Border Water places transboundary water management in the frame of the larger binational relationship, offering a comprehensive history of transnational water management between the United States and Mexico. As we move into the next century of transnational water management, this important work offers critical insights into lessons learned and charts a path for the future.
 

Cover ArtCity at the Crossroads: The Pandemic, Protests, and Public Service in Albuquerque by Joline Gutierrez Krueger

Call Number: Branson Library, Special Collections - Non-circulating F804.A3 K78 2022
ISBN: 9781737197607
Publication Date: 2022-10-04
As COVID-19 jammed Albuquerque's famous Route 66, businesses adapted or closed; as case numbers rose, public health needs changed and tensions flared. Add to the long haul of COVID-19 a summer of political unrest, the murder of George Floyd, and protests about historic statues and memorials, and 2020 was one for the books. City at the Crossroads helps preserve the history of pandemic year one in Albuquerque, as journalist Joline Gutierrez Krueger reports on how the city's government and citizens came together to weather change.
 
Cover ArtRestoring the Pitchfork Ranch: How Healing a Southwest Oasis Holds Promise for Our Endangered Land by A. Thomas Cole
Call Number: Branson Library, Special Collections - Non-circulating QH105.N6 C65 2024
ISBN: 9780816552825
Publication Date: 2024-02-27
The Pitchfork Ranch is more than another dusty homestead tucked away in a corner of the Southwest. It is a place with a story to tell about the most pressing crisis to confront humankind. It is a place where one couple is working every day to right decades of wrongs. It is a place of inspiration and promise. It is an invitation to join the struggle for a better planet. Restoring the Pitchfork Ranch tells the story of a decades-long habitat restoration project in southwestern New Mexico. Rancher-owner A. Thomas Cole explains what inspired him and his wife, Lucinda, to turn their retirement into years dedicated to hard work and renewal. The book shares the past and present history of a very special ranch south of Silver City, which is home to a rare type of regional wetland, a fragile desert grassland ecosystem, archaeological sites, and a critical wildlife corridor in a drought-stricken landscape. Today the 11,300 acres that make up the Pitchfork Ranch provide an important setting for carbon sequestration, wildlife habitats, and space for the reintroduction of endangered or threatened species. Restoring the Pitchfork Ranch weaves together stories of mine strikers, cattle ranching, and the climate crisis into an important and inspiring call to action. For anyone who has wondered how they can help, the Pitchfork Ranch provides an inspiring way forward.
 
Cover ArtRio Grande Steam Finale: Narrow Gauge Railroad Photography in Colorado and New Mexico by Scott Lothes (Editor); Don Hofsommer (Photographer); Karl Zimmermann (Photographer); Richard Steinheimer (Photographer); Jim Shaughnessy (Photographer); John Gruber (Photographer); Victor Hand (Photographer)
Call Number: Branson Library, Special Collections - Non-circulating HE2791.D4423 R564 2023
ISBN: 9781734563528
Publication Date: 2023-10-01
The Denver & Rio Grande Western's spectacular narrow gauge lines in Colorado and New Mexico provided the stage for the last great steam locomotive show in North America. Railroad photographers from all over the country came to document, portray, and interpret these lines in their final decades of the 1950s and 1960s. Drawing from its rich collections, the Center for Railroad Photography & Art showcases the best of their work in this deluxe, hardcover volume. Essays by noted authors Don Hofsommer and Karl Zimmermann, both of whom experienced the narrow gauge lines first-hand in the 1960s, provide context and personal insights. The 10x10 book includes a map and nearly 200 photographs in both black-and-white and color.
 
Cover ArtThe Sheep Industry of Territorial New Mexico: Livestock, Land, and Dollars by Jon M. Wallace
Call Number: Branson Library, Special Collections - Non-circulating HD9436.U5 W355 2024
ISBN: 9781646425464
Publication Date: 2024-05-17
The Sheep Industry of Territorial New Mexico offers a detailed account of the New Mexico sheep industry during the territorial period (1846-1912) when it flourished. As a mainstay of the New Mexico economy, this industry was essential to the integration of New Mexico (and the Southwest more broadly) into the national economy of the expanding United States. Author Jon Wallace tells the story of evolving living conditions as the sheep industry came to encompass innumerable families of modest means. The transformation improved many New Mexicans' lives and helped establish the territory as a productive part of the United States. There was a cost, however, with widespread ecological changes to the lands--brought about in large part by heavy grazing. Following the US annexation of New Mexico, new markets for mutton and wool opened. Well-connected, well-financed Anglo merchants and growers who had recently arrived in the territory took advantage of the new opportunity and joined their Hispanic counterparts in entering the sheep industry. The Sheep Industry of Territorial New Mexico situates this socially imbued economic story within the larger context of the environmental consequences of open-range grazing while examining the relationships among Hispanic, Anglo, and Indigenous people in the region. Historians, students, general readers, and specialists interested in the history of agriculture, labor, capitalism, and the US Southwest will find Wallace's analysis useful and engaging.
 
Cover ArtSon of the Old West: The Odyssey of Charlie Siringo: Cowboy, Detective, Writer of the Wild Frontier by Nathan Ward
Call Number: Branson Library, Special Collections - Non-circulating F391.S624 W37 2023
ISBN: 9780802162083
Publication Date: 2023-09-05
An epic narrative of the Old West told through the vivid, outsized life of cowboy, detective, and chronicler Charlie Siringo. No figure in the Old West lived or shaped its history more fully than Charlie Siringo, as Nathan Ward reveals in his colorful portrait of this epic era and one of its primary protagonists. Born in Matagorda, Texasin 1855, Charlie went on his first cattle drive at age twelve and spent two decades living his boyhood dream as a cowboy. As the dangerous, lucrative "beeves" business boomed, Siringo drove longhorn steers north to the burgeoning Midwest Plains states' cattle and railroad towns, inevitably crossing paths with such legendary figures as Billy the Kid, Bat Masterson, and Shanghai Pierce. In his early thirties he joined the Pinkerton Detective Agency's Denver office, using a variety of aliases to investigate violent labor disputes and infiltrate outlaw gangs such as Butch Cassidy's train robbing Wild Bunch. As brave as he was clever, he was often saved by his cowboy training as he traveled to places the law had not yet reached. Siringo's bestselling, landmark 1885 autobiography, A Texas Cowboy, helped make the lowly cowboy a heroic symbol of the American West. His later memoir, A Cowboy Detective, influenced early hard-boiled crime novelists for whom the detective story was really the cowboy story in an urban setting. Sadly sued into debt by the Pinkertons determined to prevent their sources and methods from being revealed, Siringo eventually sold his beloved New Mexico ranch and moved to Los Angeles, where he advised Hollywood filmmakers, and especially actor William S. Hart, on their early 1920s Westerns, watching the frontier history he had known first-hand turned into romantic legend on the screen. In old age, Charlie Siringo was called "Ulysses of the Wild West" for the long journey he took across the western frontier. Son of the Old West brings him and his legendary world vividly to life.
 
Cover ArtUFO: The Inside Story of the US Government's Search for Alien Life Here--and Out There by Garrett M. Graff
Call Number: Branson Library, Special Collections - Non-circulating TL789.4 .G73 2023
ISBN: 9781982196776
Publication Date: 2023-11-14
"One of the rare books on the topic that manages to be both entertaining and factually grounded." --The Wall Street Journal From the bestselling author of Raven Rock, The Only Plane in the Sky, and Watergate (finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in history) comes the first comprehensive and eye-opening exploration of our government's decades-long quest to solve one of humanity's greatest mysteries: Are we alone in the universe? For as long as we have looked to the skies, the question of whether life on earth is the only life to exist has been at the core of the human experience, driving scientific debate and discovery, shaping spiritual belief, and prompting existential thought across borders and generations. It's one of our culture's favorite conversations, and yet, the idea of extraterrestrial intelligence has been largely banished to the realm of fantasy and conspiracy. Now, for the first time, the full story of our national obsession with UFOs--and the covert search by scientists, the United States military, and the CIA for proof of alien life--is told by bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize finalist Garrett M. Graff in a deeply reported and researched history. It begins in 1947, when two headline-making sightings of strange flying objects prompt the US Air Force's newly formed Department of Defense to create a series of secret programs to determine how unidentified phenomena may pose a threat to national security. Over the next half-century, as the atomic age gives way to the space race and the Cold War, the mission continues, bringing together an unexpected group of astronomers, military officials, civilian contactees, and true believers who bring us closer, then further, then closer again, to answering one of our most enduring questions: What exactly is out there? Drawing from original archival research, declassified documents, and interviews with senior intelligence and military officials, Graff brings readers a story that's "Loads of fun...[a] fascinating deep dive down the rabbit hole" (Publishers Weekly).
 
Cover ArtVoices of Navajo Mothers and Daughters: Portraits of Beauty by Kathy Eckles Hooker; David Young-Wolff (Photographer)
Call Number: Branson Library, Special Collections - Non-circulating E99.N3 H741 2022
ISBN: 9781734989922
Publication Date: 2022-05-08
"(A) deeply moving, must-read for mothers and daughters everywhere." - Chanticleer Reviews In a series of intimate, revelatory personal histories, Navajo grandmothers, mothers, and daughters in twenty-one families tell their stories. They open up about how they have been shaped by powerful cultural and historical forces--and by their love for each other. In these compelling, multi-generational oral histories, collected by a former teacher with profound admiration for Navajo culture, women talk about their experiences in their own words. As they do, their faces are captured in defining portraits. Woven into the women's stories are tales from Navajo history and culture, including Changing Woman, the coming-of-age ceremony (kinaaldá), the Long Walk, education, and the importance of sheep to Navajo lifeway. "A valuable look at how Navajo women band together to celebrate life's joys, push through adversity, and guide the next generation." - Foreword Clarion Reviews