Western Culture

In this riveting account of an area of Appalachia known as the Quiet Zone where cell phones and Wi-Fi are banned, journalist Stephen Kurczy explores the pervasive role of technology in our lives and the innate human need for quiet.

It is difficult to imagine now, but for all its gorgeous scenery, the American West might have been barren tundra as far as most Americans knew well into the 19th century. While the West was advertised as a paradise on earth to citizens in the East and Midwest, many believed the journey too hazardous to be worthwhile — until 1869, when the first transcontinental railroad changed the face of transportation.

They are Hazel, James, Aubrey, and Colette. A classical pianist from London, a British would-be architect turned soldier, a Harlem-born ragtime genius in the US Army, and a Belgian orphan with a gorgeous voice and a devastating past. Their story, as told by goddess Aphrodite, who must spin the tale or face judgment on Mount Olympus, is filled with hope and heartbreak, prejudice and passion, and reveals that, though war is a formidable force, it's no match for the transcendent power of love.

Often overlooked, there is mixed blood at the heart of America. And at the heart of Native life for centuries there were complex households using intermarriage to link disparate communities and create protective circles of kin. Beginning in the 17th century, Native peoples - Ojibwes, Otoes, Cheyennes, Chinooks, and others - formed new families with young French, English, Canadian, and American fur traders who spent months in smoky winter lodges or at boisterous summer rendezvous.

In an era of seemingly instant change, it's easy to think that today's revolutions - in communications, business, and many areas of daily life - are unprecedented. Today's changes may be new and may be happening faster than ever before. But our ancestors at times were just as bewildered by rapid upheavals in what we now call “networks” - the physical links that bind any society together.

"See for yourself!" was the clarion call of the 1600s. Natural philosophers threw off the yoke of ancient authority, peered at nature with microscopes and telescopes, and ignited the scientific revolution. Artists investigated nature with lenses and created paintings filled with realistic effects of light and shadow. The hub of this optical innovation was the small Dutch city of Delft.

It’s 1889, barely twenty-five years after the Emancipation Proclamation, and a young Black family is tired of working on land they don’t get to own. So when Will and his father hear about an upcoming land rush, they set out on a journey from Texas to Oklahoma, racing thousands of others to the place where land is free—if they can get to it fast enough. But the journey isn’t easy—the terrain is rough, the bandits are brutal, and every interaction carries a heavy undercurrent of danger.

In the aftermath of World War II, America stood alone as the world's premier military power. Yet its martial confidence contrasted vividly with its sense of cultural inferiority. Still looking to a defeated and dispirited Europe for intellectual and artistic guidance, burgeoning transnational elite in New York and Washington embraced not only the war's refugees but many of their ideas as well, and nothing has proven more pernicious than those of the Frankfurt School and its reactionary philosophy of "critical theory".

She's his boss. He's had a crush on her for a couple of summers now. Can Toni and Griffin mix business and pleasure while making sure the teens they're in charge of stay in line? Griffin Johnson likes getting away from his brothers and the ranch every summer, going to Camp Clear Creek, where he's a counselor for teenage boys. Finally, some peace. He loves his brothers, don't get him wrong. He just needs a break sometimes. His desire to work at Clear Creek has nothing to do with the curvy, gorgeous Toni Beardall. Noo, nothing at all. Toni has just been promoted to the senior director at camp...

Grown-ups lie. That's one truth Beans knows for sure. He and his gang know how to spot a whopper a mile away, because they are the savviest bunch of barefoot conchs (that means "locals") in all of Key West. Not that Beans really minds. It's 1934, the middle of the Great Depression. With no jobs on the island and no money anywhere, who can really blame the grown-ups for telling a few tales? Besides, Beans isn't anyone's fool. In fact he has plans. Big plans. And the consequences might surprise even Beans himself.

As promised, Darcy Butler returns to the Crow Indian reservation. It has been one year since she completed and sold her novel based on her roots and the Crow Indian tribe. Her novel had sold well and she decided that she would give back to a culture that had enriched her life. Upon her return, she finds a gift bestowed upon her from her mentor and distant cousin, Tiponi. The wise elder of the tribe has left his journal for Darcy in the event of her return as vowed by the ‘great storyteller.’ The book becomes a treasure to Darcy as she discovers the plight of the children of Running Wolf...

The dark-eyed woman in the long, black gown was first seen in the 1970s, standing near a fireplace. She was sad and translucent, present and absent at once. Strange things began to happen in the Santa Fe hotel where she was seen. Gas fireplaces turned off and on without anyone touching a switch. Glasses flew off shelves. And in one second-floor suite with a canopy bed and arched windows looking out to the mountains, guests reported alarming events.

In West of the Moon, award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Margi Preus expertly weaves original fiction with myth and folktale to tell the story of Astri, a young Norwegian girl desperate to join her father in America. After being separated from her sister and sold to a cruel goat farmer, Astri makes a daring escape. She quickly retrieves her little sister, and, armed with a troll treasure, a book of spells and curses, and a possibly magic hairbrush, they set off for America.

George Bird Grinnell, the son of a New York merchant, saw a different future for a nation in the thrall of the Industrial Age. With railroads scarring virgin lands and the formerly vast buffalo herds decimated, the country faced a crossroads: Could it pursue Manifest Destiny without destroying its natural bounty and beauty? The alarm that Grinnell sounded would spark America's conservation movement. Yet today his name has been forgotten - an omission that John Taliaferro's commanding biography now sets right with historical care and narrative flair.

Each person has a “Vector of the Mind” whose direction and magnitude can be assessed by using the questionnaire appearing in the book. For people with a western paradigm of mind who locate their self at the center, the “Vector of the Mind” is inwardly oriented. People with an eastern paradigm of mind, who are focused on the group, have an outward oriented “Vector of the Mind”. The encounter with an individual whose “Vector of the Mind” is opposed to ours creates a cross-cultural gap that hinders communication. “Babel – a Guide to the East-West Encounter” surveys the ...

The Magic Tree House carries Jack and Annie back to the Old West, where they roam the Great Plains with a Lakota boy.

An exceptional collection of first-hand accounts of ghost encounters of American Indians written by an American Indian! Personal experiences of horrific hauntings and spirit sightings throughout the southwest states of Arizona, California, Colorado, and New Mexico. Each short story offers the reader a journey of exploration into the spiritually scared and privileged world known only to Native Americans.

We live in a strange world in which the victorious West has fallen into a strange funk created by the bizarre and psychotic beliefs of postmodernism. At the same time, the original challenger of Western dominance, Islam, continues to expand despite recent setbacks and is set to begin overpowering the West through population growth. In this book, the companion to Mere Animals, the author describes how a renewed commitment to public good could help focus our attention and give us the foundation for preserving Western values and saving humanity from Islamic domination.

I Hear My People Singing shines a light on a small but historic black neighborhood at the heart of one of the most elite and internationally renowned Ivy League towns - Princeton, New Jersey. The vivid first-person accounts of more than 50 black residents detail aspects of African American life throughout the 20th century.

SOMETIMES THE GOOD GUYS DON’T FIGHT FAIR... Jack Wheat was a Rhino hunter. At sixteen years old, he started roaming the planet in search of the monstrous creatures that burst from the ground and ripped humans to shreds with their great serrated horn. He and his horse, Killer, knew the land well: every desert oasis, every rock, every hill and mountain and forest. They were a team, and Jack was a hero… Until he and his lady, Sheffie Jarrett, were lured to New Lisbon to help “solve” the worsening Rhino problem in Agrilot’s largest city. While scientists in Lisbon worked to recreate a...