The latest issue of Nevada in the West Magazine, Fall 2011 (Vol. 2, No. 3), is out in bookstores and in mailboxes now.  We reviewed the first few issues in a previous issue of The Nevada Review, and spoke glowingly of our good friends there at the magazine who do so much for literature and history in our state.

The magazine, which started shortly after we launched our journal, has been great to us over the years, and has been able to do many things that we haven’t.  Here is how I described it in my review:

Nevada in the West is a glossy and well-designed magazine dedicated to the history and splendor of Nevada. Issued quarterly, its editorial focus spans the State, covering all aspects of Nevada’s history through a variety of genres, including reviews, interviews, essays, scholarly articles, and announcements. Additionally, because of the magazine’s focus on presenting the excellent content in most appealing manner possible, all of the content is complemented by historic and contemporary photography.

Take a look at the contents for the latest issue below, and be sure to pick up a copy and see all of the other interesting items that aren’t included below:

• Atomic Cheeseheads The Nevada Test Site and Las Vegas in the 1950s, by Aaron McArthur
• The Liberty Belle – A Reno Landmark, by Marshall A. Fey
• Tonopah, Nevada, Mining Disaster of 1911, by William J. Metscher
• The IRA and “Indian New Deal” in Nevada, by Shayne Del Cohen
• Lake Tahoe’s Thunderbird Lodge Historic Site, by Bill Watson
• Japanese Balloon Bombs Over Nevada During World War II, by Chuck Weller
• Jean McElrath Remembered, by Milton L. Sharp
• Phyllis Bendure and the Pentagon Patches, by Ken Beaton

If you haven’t seen it yet, the inaugural issue of Urban Family Magazine is out on shelves and you should really check it out.  I spent some time with it this weekend and really liked it.  The stories were all great and it struck me as a truly one-of-a-kind publication, and not just for Reno.  It really is worth your time.  It looks like they are getting some healthy advertising from the Nevada Museum of Art, which, together with their excellent content, bodes very, very well for their future. Be sure and check out their Bookshelf feature, which I hope remains a prominent aspect of the publication.

The equally magnificent magazine for our great state, Nevada in the West Magazine, has released it’s latest issue as well.  They have consistently gotten better with each issue, and if you’ve been following this blog you’ll know that we’ve really respected what they do from the beginning.  We review the issues to date in the current issue of The Nevada Review that is on shelves now.  They truly do great work.  Check them out.

The great (and I mean great) Nevada Cowboy Poet Waddie Mitchell receives an appropriate honor.  I’ve seen him live and own several of his albums so I feel comfortable saying that he is one of the best out there.  Take a listen to him reading one of my favorites, “Sentence.”

Susan Skorupa, who reviews more books on Nevada in a week than you will read in a year, reviews three new books look at northern Nevada.  They are all books by Arcadia, which does those  pictorial histories of peoples and regions that you see all over the place.  It speaks well of their model that they are expanding to little old northern Nevada with their books.

J. Patrick Collican of the Las Vegas Sun reviews his colleague’s book about his gambling addiction.

Correction: We recently reviewed Ace Remas’s book Precious Time, which is set in Hawthorne, and we got the price wrong.  The actual price for the book is $19.95.  Take a look at the review with the updated price here.

Nevada in the West magazine, which recently celebrated their one-year anniversary with a brewery party, has released their latest issue–an appropriately themed Nevada brewery issue.  As always, the latest issue of the magazine is thoughtful, interesting, and truly enjoyable.  There is a lot more to it than just historical looks at breweries in the state, including book reviews and other features.  We review the concept and execution of their first four issues in our latest issue of The Nevada Review, and not surprisingly if you know the team that puts the magazine out, it gets very high marks.  You can find more details, subscribe, and check out back issues on their website.  Fans of Nevada literature should really support this excellent endeavor.

Continued proof of literary life in the Silver State…

The Black Mountain Institute at UNLV has just released the most recent issue of Witness journal, with the thematic title of “Blurring Borders.”  Take a look at the contents here.  Don’t forget to check out Interim, the other literary journal affiliated with UNLV’s MFA program.  Strangely, UNR houses the University of Nevada Press, does not seem to have a literary journal affiliated with it.

I could spend hours thumbing through these pages: The New York Times book review pages after a search using the term “Nevada.”

The great Reno author Don Waters, author of Desert Gothic, has written an excellent review of Jonathan Evison’s West of Here in the San Francisco Chronicle.

The Sacramento Bee has an interesting interview with the editor of Mark Twain’s autobiography, a runaway smash hit that has proven that good writing by interesting people is still desirable in print form.

Check out the musings of Michael Branch, an English professor in UNR’s L&E program.  He writes this monthly column for the great High Country News.

If you haven’t subscribed to Nevada in the West magazine yet, you should do so here.  And watch out for a review of the first four issues in the upcoming issue in the Nevada Review.

This review of Stanley W. Paher’s Nevada Ghost Towns and Mining Camps ran in our first issue. Although the first book was released in the early 1970s, we decided to run a review of it here because of its ubiquitousness on the Nevada bookshelf.  Read this interview I did with Stanley previously published in the pages of Nevada in the West Magazine.

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Paher, Stanley W.  Nevada Ghost Towns and Mining Camps (Historical and Old West). Howel-North Publishing Co., 1970.  492 pages.  $54.95—In my business as a bookseller, I am often asked which book to start with in an inquiry into the history of Nevada.  While notable literary authors, including Robert Laxalt and Effie Mona Mack, have written fine informative histories of Nevada, I always suggest Stanley Paher’s Nevada Ghost Towns and Mining Camps.

I purchased my first copy of this book in 1972, and I still have my original copy.  Through my many years of hunting, prospecting, and business travel around the state, I have referred back to Nevada Ghost Towns and Mining Camps to keep informed about the history of the places I visited.  I am not alone in this reliance on Paher’s work for Nevada history, as the book has gone through 14 printings with over 67,000 copies printed.

While Paher’s work does not set out to be a general history of Nevada, the comprehensive coverage of the mining camp era makes it indispensable for understanding the development of Nevada as a state and the background of the formation of modern Nevada.  This book differs from most histories in that it is not organized chronologically or by subject, but rather geographically.  The entire book consists of short histories of the many mining towns and camps that sprang up, sometimes grew, and then declined in the last half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the 20th century. Again, these vignettes are organized geographically by county. Read the rest of this entry »

I did this interview of Nevada Ghost Town author Stanley Paher for an issue of Nevada in the West Magazine last year.  They are great folks, and performing a magnificent service for lovers of Nevada and Western history.  You can read a full review of their four issues to date in the forthcoming issue of the Nevada Review.  And you can go to their website to learn more about them here.

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Stanley W. Paher is a self-described “desert rat,” or one who glories and prospers within the desert climates of Nevada, California, Arizona and other western states.  Since the early 1950s it was his dream to catalog the many homesteads, encampments, and towns of the early Nevada settlers, and in 1970 he achieved his goal with the publication of Nevada Ghost Towns and Mining Camps. Since its publication, Stanley has continued to write and collect on Nevada, authored several bestsellers, and become one of the primary publishers and distributors of books on Nevada’s mining history.  He sat down for an interview with Caleb S. Cage of the Nevada Review in May of this year.

CSC: Stanley, you are from Nevada, is that correct?

SWP: Native Nevadan.  Native Las Vegan.

CSC: How did your family come to Nevada? Read the rest of this entry »