Product Description
The creation of a library system in Nevada presented formidable challenges. Until the middle of the twentieth century, Nevada had the smallest population of any state in the Union, sparsely scattered over a vast area; most towns were very small; and the economy was largely based on agriculture and a boom-and-bust mining industry, uncongenial to the kind of long-term financial commitments needed to build, stock, and maintain libraries. Yet from the very beginning, efforts were made to create libraries. Many mining camps had reading clubs that offered residents a quiet place to peruse the latest newspapers and other materials, and fraternal orders, women's groups, and other organizations established small lending and subscription libraries.

In "Oases of Culture," veteran Nevada historian James W. Hulse recounts the tortuous and often colorful history of Nevada's libraries and the work of the dedicated librarians, educators, civic leaders, women's organizations, philanthropists, and politicians who struggled to make the democratic vision of free libraries available to all Nevadans. From the establishment of the State Library in 1865, only one year after statehood, through the creation of tax-supported public libraries after passage of a library law in 1895, to the development of today's modern university and community college libraries and the public-library information services that serve Nevada's booming and increasingly diverse population, Hulse recounts the trials and triumphs of Nevada's libraries. He also examines the role of Nevada librarians in fostering literacy and confronting the First Amendment controversies that have periodically shaken the nation's cultural foundations.

"Oases of Culture" is a detailed, lively, and meticulously researched study of a very important part of Nevada's development as a state. The state's modern library system is one of the brightest elements of the lifestyle it offers its current population, and Hulse's account preserves the often frustrating and sometimes heroic efforts of the remarkable individuals who built it. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Ok but a little out of Date
The book is easy to read, the facts are presented in a straightforward fashion, the graphic work is good, and it is pithy given the subject.No long winded discussions of anything here, just a slam dunk book of Nevada facts.Fun stuff; however, the book is about 3 years old so a lot of the population figures are out of date.Thus, 3 stars.The book is not for someone looking for a detailed analysis of Nevada.It is more along the lines of a Jr. High kind of geography.

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Customer Reviews (5)

Great Read, great Series
Very interesting insight in to not only early Mountaineering in California, but also of life in early California.Being a longtime resident of the Valley, it was great to get a glimpse into the past and dream of what it was then, as opposed to now

Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada
I thought the book was very well written andinteresting,as was the life of the author Clarence King. His descriptions of the Sierra Mountains in the 1860's and 1870s and how they got their names and the early climbs he attempted.

Bold Tales, Well Told
Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada is essential reading for anyone who both loves those mountains and wants to get a glimpse of life there before it reached the level of settlement it has today. Whether or not all the stories here are strictly factual, they are often both gripping and entertaining. Additionally, they bring the reader some sense of what rural central California life was like at that time.
Clarence King was a gifted wordsmith. His hilarious, politically incorrect descriptions of western characters are reminiscent of some of the best incisive commentary of Mark Twain. Then his descriptions of climbing in the mountains are so intense that you may even wince as you are carried along as he describes some of the most hair-raising brushes with death. Those who have been where King describes will certainly feel what King has written as they read along.
One reviewer, though entertained, seems to doubt what King says. I don't. Though there may be a little hyperbole in King's description of events, the reader should remember that at that time the average guy was far more physically fit than the average guy today. You had to be or you didn't make it, because every day in the wilderness was fraught with challenge and physical danger.
All in all, you could say that this book is a collection of bold tales well told. I particularly like the stories of his crossing the desert coming to California, of the hog farmers, of his escape from determined bandits, of his ultimate conquest of Mt Whitney, and of all the colorful characters he meets in his path both in the Sierras and at Shasta.
And though some might take him for a bigot because of some of his comments about the natives, remember that he saves the sharpest point of his pen for the most worthless characters of his own stock who abound in the California of his day. Whatever you think about what King has written, once you pick this up you'll find it hard to put down until you've finished the last paragraph.

Tall tales and true fables?
Clarence King sure knows how to tell a good story. Whether they are true stories, well that's for you to decide. But really, it doesn't matter. You'll read of him dangling from the edge of great cliffs and running from wild west bandits, all the while keeping the reader wondering how he'll ever live to tell the tale. Overall the book is a collection of stories by a man who loved the Sierra Nevada, for it vast wilderness was his playground.

Quite a storyteller--but not all told!!!
This classic work by one of the great yarn-spinners of all time includes some wonderful descriptive information about California places and people in the early 1860s and some gripping, heartstopping tales about King's own mountaineering exploits. Even in his early 20s, Clarence King was recognized for leaderhip and intellectual ability. He served with the Army Topographic Engineers on the survey of the Western United States along the 40th parallel and was an intimate of Henry Adams and his wife in their small social/intellectual circle in Washington D.C. (See Patricia O'Toole's "The Five of Hearts"). He established his national reputation for being a shrewd, practical man of science when he discovered and exposed a stock swindle based on salted ore and fraudulent assay samples when asked to evaluate a mining promotion in Colorado. "Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada" is a non-chronological, semi-autobiographical reconstruction of some of King's time (circa 1862-63) with Josiah Whitney's Survey, commissioned by the State legislature to catalogue and evaluate California geologic and mineral resources. It is an entertaining and engrossing narration of one foolhardy, death-defying exploit after another. Like those of John Muir (another classic, albeit overrated talesman of the Range of Light), Clarence King's numerous renditions of his own hairsbreadth escapes from impossibly precarious positions by the power of luck, pluck and sheer physical prowess, while entertaining and enthralling, were made possible only by his own chronic rash foolhardiness, if not by tremendous powers of exaggeration. A better man was his fellow draft-dodger (the Civil War was going on back East all the while they were dancing around in the mountains of California, after all), William Brewer. Brewer served longer, harder and more responsibly than King in the Whitney Survey. Brewer also wrote a factually more thorough and reliable description of conditions in the young state of California in a series of letters home to his family in New England (collected as "Up and Down California"), with none of King's histrionics but just as entertaining in its own way. King's book does include some unique insights. One is his near-comic description of the "Piker" rubes (from Pike County, Missouri), rural folk residing in the foothills of the Southern San Joaquin Valley, which can be read as a precourser of all hilarious mountain folk descriptions, from Li'l Abner through the Beverley Hillbillies to Deliverance. But truth be told (rarely enough, one suspects), this book is mostly about the indefatigable King and his own personal exploits in the Southern Sierra. While King's literary talent was substantial, his writing (and indeed his entire public life and historic reputation) were seemingly unilluminated in any way by his own domestic arrangements. These included a life-long love relationship and common law marriage to a black woman, Ada, with whom he maintained a household including their several children. Not only did he keep the marriage secret from all of his prominent social contacts, but he kept his own notorious identity and true name a secret from his wife and children until just before he died. Still, under the constant strain of maintaining a double identity, he continued to support his family and maintained an exhausting schedule of international travel, geological consulting and writing until he died prematurely from consumption at the age of 59. (See Thurman Wilkins' "Clarence King"). You won't find any mention of King's real family anything King wrote for public consumption, or even for the consumption of his well-placed friends. Altogether, this book makes for a slightly less than satisfying cud to chew over, but it tastes pretty good the first time on the way down. ... Read more

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Describes the geography, plants, animals, history, economy, religions, culture, sports, arts, and people of Nevada. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

There is not much to Nevada but you would not know from this book
I finally made it to Las Vegas a couple of years ago.It is not really in between any two places, so you cannot really drive through it on the way from some place that is not California to someplace in California the way you can drive through Reno.You really have to go to Las Vegas on purpose.The question then, of course, is how did you do at the tables, on the slots, etc.The answer is I did not gamble when I was in Las Vegas.Why not?Because the first time I was ever in Nevada I was at a gas station in the middle of nowhere (not on the way to Las Vegas), and there was a slot machine.So I took out a quarter, put it in and yanked the bandit's arm.I won two quarters back so I immediately quit, one of the few people on the face of the planet who can honestly say they were to Nevada and doubled their money on the slot machines.

R. Conrad Stein is aware that his audience is too young to gamble, so Chapter One in this America the Beautiful Second Series look at Nevada introduces "The Silver State" a place where very little come easy.Once the mines played out it was tourism that became the engine that made Nevada once of the fastest growing states.The history of Nevada as part of the American West is detailed in the next three chapters.Chapter Two, "Nevada's Distant Past," begins with the ancient peoples who left petroglyphs and ends with the first explorers from Spain and the United States.Chapter Three, "Pioneering in the Silver State," tells of the Comstock bonanza and the silver mines led to statehood for Nevada.Chapter Four, "Twentieth-Century Nevada," establishes a clear contrast to the past with the Hoover Dam, gambling, and atomic bomb testing.

The geography of Nevada is presented as "Sagebrush and Open Spaces" in Chapter Five, as Stein describes the lay of the land and the hot, dry climate.Chapter Six, "Quiet Villages and Bright Lights," establishes the contrast between the northern part of the state where the cowboys reign, the area around Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevada, and the Mecca that is Las Vegas."Governing the Silver State" is covered in Chapter Seven, and if young readers do not anticipate the state metal being silver, then they are just not paying attention.More interesting is the Tule duck, a duck decoy made 2,000 years ago that is the state artifact.

Chapter Eight, "Nevada at Work," start off talking about the service industry in the state, but covers other aspects of the economy as well.Chapter Nine, "A Look at Nevadans," explains what the population explosion in the state has meant, which has 90 percent of the citizens living in city areas (only California, New Jersey and Hawaii have a greater urban percentage).This is also the chapter where we finally get to this volume's recipe, which is for Basque Garlic Soup (warning: it involves not just garlic but eggs as well)."Entertainment and Fine Arts" is the province of Chapter Ten, which covers basket weaving and literature to go along with leisure activities.

This look at Nevada is filled with full-color photographs, helpful maps, and dozens of informative sidebars.With these latter young students will find some of the most interesting things that Stein has worked into this book, such as the Lost City Museum, the ill-fated Donner Party, the Gridley sack of flour, Benjamin "Don't Call Me Bugsy" Siegel, and the E.T. Highway.A Timeline contrasting U.S. and Nevada state history is provided in the back of the book along with several pages of Fast Facts, and a list of books, organizations, and Internet sites where readers can go To Find Out More about Nevada. What stands out with this particular volume is that Stein sticks a bit more to the modern history of the state and that since there is not as much to say about Nevada as there is about a state like California, there is a bit more depth than we normally get. ... Read more

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Discusses the geography, history, people, government, economy, and recreation of Nevada. ... Read more

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A brief introduction to the history of the Silver State and its geography, industries, wildlife, cities, and major tourist attractions. ... Read more

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Surveys the people, geography, and history of the state that is known for the huge amounts of silver once mined there. ... Read more

Product Description
Originally published in 1919.This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies.All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume. ... Read more

Product Description
Originally published in 1916.This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies.All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume. ... Read more