BookShelf

If you are a UM alum with a recent book release, don’t forget about your alma mater. To be considered for Bookshelf, you must send a copy of the book, along with any press materials and contact information, to: Montanan, University Relations, 325 Brantly Hall, Missoula, MT 59812. Submission of materials does not guarantee that your work will be featured.

Streams of Consciousness:
Hip-Deep Dispatches from the River of Life
By Jeff Hull, UM adjunct instructor of journalism
Lyons Press, 2007, 208 pp., $19.95

This collection is about fishing and everything but fishing. From the trout streams of Montana, shores of New England, spring creeks of Chile’s Patagonia, and clear waters of Belize, Hull regales readers with humility and hilarity. His dispatches, filled with compelling characters and spectacular fishing stories, offer searing insight into the human heart.

My Montana:
A History and Memoir, 1930-1950
By Jewel Beck Lansing ’52
Inkwater Press, 2007, 271 pp., $22.95

This memoir captures the pioneer spirit of Montana homesteaders and gives a warm and respectful look at a rural Western Montana girlhood in the 1930s and 1940s. Difficult days? Yes, but the challenges were met with ingenuity, cooperation, camaraderie, and humor.

Scarlett’s Sisters:
Young Women in the Old South
By Anya Jabour, UM professor of history
University of North Carolina Press, 2007, 384 pp., $39.95

This true story of the celebrated fictional character’s flesh-and-blood counterparts explores the meaning of nineteenth-century Southern womanhood from the vantage point of a group poised to become its society’s feminine ideal: young, elite, white women. By tracing the lives of young southern women in a society in flux, this study reveals how the old social order was maintained and a new one created as these girls and women learned, questioned, and ultimately changed what it meant to be a Southern lady.

Radiant Days
By Michael A. Fitzgerald, M.F.A. ’00
Shoemaker & Hoard, 2007, 256 pp., $15.00

Internet worker Anthony Sinclair, frustrated by ’90s dot-com mania, abandons his pampered life in San Francisco to follow the gorgeous but enigmatic Gisela on a search for her lost son in Hungary. In Budapest, they meet March, a brilliant British war correspondent. With swift plot and seamless style, Fitzgerald moves the novel’s readers from the tattered romanticism of Budapest to the sparkling Dalmatian coast and into the brutalized landscape of Croatia during the last days of the Balkan War. As the narrative unfolds, alliances shift, friendships loosen, and no one is to be entirely trusted.

Contested Waters:
A Social History of Swimming Pools in America
By Jeff Wiltse, UM assistant professor of history
University of North Carolina Press, 2007, 288 pp., $29.95

From nineteenth-century public baths to today’s private backyard havens, swimming pools have been a provocative symbol of American life. In this social and cultural history of swimming pools, Wiltse relates the story of class and race conflicts, the growth of cities and suburbs, competing visions of social reform, the eroticization of public culture, the democratization of leisure, and Americans’ recent retreat from public life.

Cromwell Dixon: A Boy & His Plane, 1892-1911
By Martin J. Kidston ’97
Farcountry Press, 2007, 168 pp., $14.95

Kidston tells the dramatic story of turn-of-the-century child prodigy Cromwell Dixon, who became the youngest licensed pilot in the United States. In his plane, the Little Hummingbird, Dixon was the first to fly across the Continental Divide, only to meet with a fiery death two days later. Like the tale of Icarus, Dixon’s story is one of great daring, accomplishment, and tragedy. (Illustrated with 40 historical photographs)

The Charcoal Forest:
How Fire Helps Animals and Plants
By Beth A. Paluso, M.S. ’02
Mountain Press Publishing Company, 2007, 64 pp., $12.00

Beautifully illustrated by the author, the book explores new habitat created by fire. Focusing on the Northern Rocky Mountains of the United States and Canada, Paluso describes twenty species of animals and plants that contribute to the reclamation and renewal of the charcoal forest. A delightful book for both kids and adults.

The Kids from Nowhere:
The Story Behind the Arctic Educational Miracle
By George Guthridge, M.F.A. ’72
Alaska Northwest Books, 2006, 326 pp., $16.95

The true story of a group of Siberian Yupik Eskimo students from a school of forty-one kids who overcame seemingly insurmountable obstacles to achieve what others called “impossible.” On blizzard-swept St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea with Guthridge as their teacher and guide, children of whale and walrus hunters once labeled “uneducable” become the only team of Native Americans in U.S. history to win a national championship in academics—and they did so twice.

[Editor’s Note: This book was written for charity. The author, along with Greg Mortenson, who penned Three Cups of Tea, are working to raise money to build a school in the Himalayas in the name of the “Kids from Nowhere,” as they proudly called themselves. For more information visit: http://www.thekidsfromnowhere.com.]

Love Tracks:
Mystical Adventures in the Company of Dogs
By D.J. Filson ’74
Humanics Publishing Group, 2006, 162 pp., $17.95

Through stories, quotes, and personal insights, Filson explores the roles animals play in peoples’ lives. She writes about dogs and mystics and the qualities they have in common, examining what it means to be touched by the profound gifts dogs offer.

Northwest Trees:
Identifying and Understanding the Region’s Native Trees, second edition
By Stephen F. Arno, M.S. ’66, Ph.D. ’70
Mountaineers Books, 2007, 257 pp., $18.95

The updated and expanded version of the 1977 classic guide to identifying and appreciating Northwest trees covers Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, and north to Canada. The guide helps readers identify more than sixty species. Illustrated by Ramona P. Hammerly.