Judge Benjamin Barr Lindsey's exposé of big business's influence on Colorado and Denver politics caused a sensation when serialized in Everybody's Magazine 1909-1910. When published as a book later in 1910, The Beast was considered every bit the equal of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. Now back in print, the book reveals the plight of working-class Denver citizens - in particular, those Denver youths who ended up in Lindsey's court day after day. These encounters led him to create Denver's Juvenile Court, one of the first courts in the country set up to deal specifically with young delinquents. In addition, Lindsey exposes the darker sides of many well-known figures in Colorado history, including Mayor Robert W. Speer, industrialist and Senator Simon Guggenheim, and Denver tramway czar William Gray Evans. More than just a fascinating slice of Denver history, this book - and Lindsey's court - inspired widespread social change in the United States.

In the Cowboy State (also known as Wyoming), the Wild West has never died. The West has long been the favored repository of the East’s cultural fantasies, and in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Eastern expectations and demands largely shaped Wyoming's image in this role. Becoming Western shows how the myth of the “American West” has acted as a force both in history and in individual lives.

Liza J. Nicholas interrogates the creation of Western lore by looking at five stories that focus on, respectively, Jack Flagg, a Wyoming legend and the supposed model for Owen Wister’s Virginian; an equestrian statue of Buffalo Bill sculpted by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney; the dude ranch; the creation of the American studies program at Yale; and a campaign for the U.S. Senate. Each story reveals the ways in which the East consciously imagined and manipulated the West and how Wyomingites in turn interpreted this identity, manipulated it, and put it to work for themselves. Becoming Western is a fascinating study of how invented traditions can become potent cultural and political ideology on a local as well as a national level.

Ronald Holt recounts the survival of a people against all odds. A compound of rapid white settlement of the most productive Southern Paiute homelands, especially their farmlands near tributaries of the Colorado River; conversion by and labor for the Mormon settlers; and government neglect placed the Utah Paiutes in a state of dependency that ironically culminated in the 1957 termination of their status as federally recognized Indians. That recognition and attendant services were not restored until 1980, in an act that revived the Paiutes’ identity, self-government, land ownership, and sense of possibility. 

With a foreword by Lora Tom, chair of the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah.

First published in Spanish in 1911, this little-known biography of Casimiro Barela (1847-1920) is a rare account of an accomplished politician's career whose life was shaped by issues of race and class.

Books, Bluster, and Bounty examines a cross-section of Carnegie library applications to determine how local support was mustered for cultural institutions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century West. This comparative study considers the entire region between the Rockies and the Cascades/Sierras, including all of Idaho, Utah, Nevada, and Arizona; western Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado; eastern Oregon and Washington; and small parts of California and New Mexico. The author's purpose is to address not only the how of the process but also the variable why. Although virtually all citizens and communities in the West who sought Carnegie libraries expected tangible benefits for themselves that were only tangentially related to books, what they specifically wanted varied in correlation with the diverse nature of western communities. By looking at the detailed records of the Carnegie library campaigns, the author is able to provide an alternative lens through which to perceive and map the social-cultural makeup and town building of western communities at the turn of the century.

"A comprehensive, chronological, architectural perspective of Boulder, including photography worthy of inclusion in university history classes. . . . the softbound book presents a meaningful overview of how Boulder has grown. . . . Boulder: Evolution of a City is as gripping a page—turner as anything you'll find on the mystery shelves. For leisure readers or for history buffs, Pettem's work is genuine, relevant and absorbing."— Boulder Daily Camera

"[Boulder] is a delight. It provides a welcome experience in nostalgia for old—time Boulderites and is a fascinating introduction to the city for newcomers."— Jane Valentine Barker, author, Boulder, Colorado

"Photographer and historian Silvia Pettem's book, Boulder: Evolution of a City, offers an interesting look at Boulder as it was in its early days, how it's changed over the years, and how it hasn't. . . . Each photograph, whether it be old or new, is accompanied by thoughtful and detailed descriptions that provide context to the images."— Five Magazine

"The heart of this book is the numerous pages of historic photographs presented next to contemporary shots of the same site. Pettem has scoured the photo archives for pertinent images, sometimes providing several successive pictures of a single site."— Janet Ore, Colorado State University; New Mexico Historical Review

Boulder: Evolution of a City has captivated newcomers, tourists, and longtime residents for years with its dramatic visual and narrative presentation of the birth and development of Boulder. In this updated edition, 322 photographs — more than 90 of them current — capture landmarks, buildings, major events, and quiet moments from the 1860s to 2006. Photographs showing the same locations at several intervals in history reveal Boulder's continuum from past to present.