Spanish Peaks Library District

"Born a free man in New York State in 1808, Solomon Northup was kidnapped in Washington, D.C., in 1841. He spent the next twelve harrowing years of his life as a slave on a Louisiana cotton plantation. During this time he was frequently abused and often afraid for his life. After regaining his freedom in 1853, Northup decided to publish this gripping autobiographical account of his captivity. As an educated man, Northup was able to present an exceptionally...

Two Old Women: An Alaska Legend of Betrayal, Courage and Survival is a classic Athabascan Indian tale of survival, filled with suspense and wisdom as told by Velma Wallis, an outstanding Native American writer. Her style is a refreshing blend of contemporary and traditional, and her choice of subject matter challenges the taboos of her past. Yet her themes are modern -- empowerment of women, the aging of America, and a growing interest in Native American...

In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father, a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man, has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey, first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of...

This "bold...extraordinary...blockbuster..." (Newsweek magazine) begins with a birth in an African village in 1750, and ends two centuries later at a funeral in Arkansas. And in that time span, an unforgettable cast of men, women, and children come to life, many of them based on the people from Alex Haley's own family tree. When Alex Haley was a boy growing up in Tennessee, his grandmother used to tell him stories about their family, stories that...

"The animating idea of The 1619 Project is that our national narrative is more accurately told if we begin not on July 4, 1776, but in late August of 1619, when a ship arrived in Jamestown bearing a cargo of twenty to thirty enslaved people from Africa. Their arrival inaugurated a barbaric and unprecedented system of chattel slavery that would last for the next 250 years. This is sometimes referred to as the country's original sin, but it is more...

As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on “a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise” (Elizabeth Gilbert). Drawing...

Thirty years ago the University of California Press published an unusual manuscript by an anthropology student named Carlos Castaneda. The Teachings of Don Juan initiated a generation of seekers dissatisfied with the limitations of the Western worldview. Castaneda's now classic book remains controversial for the alternative way of seeing that it presents and the revolution in cognition it demands. In a series of fascinating dialogues, Castaneda sets...

A casual note left on the windshield of a car. The death of an old dog. And author Kent Nerburn unexpectedly finds himself back on the Dakota reservation where more than a decade before he traveled with the elder, Dan, whose thoughts he chronicled in the classic of Native American studies, Neither Wolf nor Dog. Now almost ninety, Dan wants Nerburn to assist in the unlikely task of burying Fatback, the old Labrador who had been Dan's closest companion...

"Vine Deloria, Jr. was named by TIME magazine as one of the greatest religious thinkers of the twentieth century. He was a leading Native American thinker whose research, writings, and teachings on history, law, religion, and politics changed the face of Indian Country, and his influence continues to impact present and future generations of Native and non-Native Americans alike. He has authored many acclaimed and bestselling books, including The World...

Guarded by cliff, river, and desert, the more than sixty sites discussed in this revised and expanded edition of Ancient Ruins include the well-known--Mesa Verde, Canyon de Chelly--the remote--Grand Gulch, Kinishba Ruins--and the newly discovered--Casa Malpais, Chimney rock Pueblo. In addition to descriptions of each site, the author provides time-saving tips for the traveler, citing major highways, nearby towns and the facilities they offer, campgrounds,...