n Best Places Las Vegas
Sasquatch Books, 2001, 352 pages
Edited by James P. Reza, ‘89 BA Political Science

The editor: James P. Reza, ’89 BA Political Science, is founding publisher of SCOPE magazine, an arts, culture, and lifestyle publication now known as Las Vegas Weekly. He is the consultant editor for all editions of the Time Out Guide to Las Vegas and has worked on numerous television productions for the Travel Channel and the BBC. He is vice president of the Cultural Development Company, a Nevada retail development firm, and a columnist for the Las Vegas Mercury.

The book: One goal of Best Places Las Vegas, Reza says, was to correct some misconceptions about the city. “It is my hope that Best Places Las Vegas will serve as a well-thumbed guide for both visitors and residents alike, two groups who are often separated by but a few weeks’ time,” he wrote in the book’s introduction. “I encourage both old-timers and newcomers to discover the city beyond the familiar facades.” For insight into what makes Las Vegas unique, Reza asked longtime residents for their honest advice on where to go and what to do. Contributors include attorney-poet Dayvid Figler, food critic John Curtas, environmental journalist Lenadams Dorris, frequent guidebook contributor David Stratton, and author David Hofstede.

 

n Boundaries Between: The Southern Paiutes, 1775-1995
University of Nebraska Press, 2001,
312 pages, plus notes
By Martha Knack

The author: Martha Knack, professor of anthropology and recently named a UNLV Distinguished Professor, is a pioneer in recognizing the importance of both men and women in Native American Studies. She is known for her expertise on Native Americans in the Great Basin. This is her third book on the subject.

The book: Boundaries Between skillfully combines contemporary oral histories with meticulous archival research in examining the culture of the Southern Paiutes and identifying the factors that have contributed to their survival. By all the “rules” of history and anthropology, this small-scale, foraging culture should have disappeared long ago. Knack’s study analyzes why the usual rules do not apply to the Southern Paiutes. Boundaries Between has been called a “landmark achievement in the field of ethnohistory.”

n Hypoactive Sexual Desire: Integrating Sex and Couple Therapy

Norton Professional Books, 2001, 288 pages
By Gerald Weeks and Nancy Gambescia.

The author: Gerald Weeks, chair of the counseling department, has more than 20 years of experience in sex and marital therapy. He is one of two therapists in Nevada certified by the American Board of Professional Psychology and the American Board of Sexology. He is also past-president of the American Board of Family Psychology. His previous works have become staples in the counseling field. Co-author Nancy Gambescia is in private practice.

In addition, Weeks and Gambesia have authored Erectile Dysfunction (WWNorton). Among the numerous other books he co-authored are Focused Genograms (Brunner Routledge) Couples in Treatment (Brunner Routledge) and Handbook of Family Therapy (Brunner/Routledge). His Paradoxical Psychotherapy, co-authored with L. L'Abate, has been translated into six languages.

The book: The authors integrate medical, psychological, and relational factors as they discuss the research on the lack of sexual desire, known clinically as hypoactive sexual desire, the most common sexual difficulty in America. They emphasize the couple, not the individual partner, as the focus of treatment, and describe the most current medical and relational techniques for treating the problem.

n Neon Metropolis: How Las Vegas Started the 21st Century
Routledge, 2002, 368 pages, illustrated
By Hal Rothman

The author: One of the most prolific authors on campus, Hal Rothman is fond of calling Las Vegas the “first city of the 21st century.” Newly elected chair of the history department, Rothman was the editor of the journal Environmental History. He is frequently quoted in national media and has served as an adviser on documentary films and television programs about Las Vegas and the West. Rothman has also authored Devil’s Bargains: Tourism in the Twentieth Century American West; Saving the Planet: The American Response to the Environment in the Twentieth Century; and I’ll Never Fight Fire with My Bare Hands Again: Recollections of the First Forest Rangers of the Inland Northwest.

The book: Las Vegas, once an isolated gambling outpost in the desert, has become mainstream and now symbolizes the new America, Rothman contends. In Las Vegas he finds a city that lets Americans fulfill their favorite fantasies. The city offers a sterilized version of Europe and New York City and escapism to a South Seas island (without torrential winds or pesky flies). Unlike many small towns that declined after 1945, Las Vegas has survived to become a real city, thanks to a malleability that lets it become whatever its visitors want it to be, Rothman contends.

n Dreams and Thunder: Stories, Poems, and The Sun Dance Opera
University of Nebraska Press, 2001,
172 pages
By Zitkala-Sa, Edited by P. Jane Hafen

The editor: P. Jane Hafen is an associate professor in the English department and a Native American from the Taos Pueblo in New Mexico. Hafen serves on the editorial board of Western American Literature and is a Frances C. Allen Fellow at the D’Arcy McNickle Center for the History of the American Indian at the Newberry Library in Chicago. This is her first book.

The author: Zitkala-Sa (Red Bird), also known as Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, was born on the Yankton Sioux Reservation in South Dakota in the year of the Battle of the Little Big Horn. An accomplished violinist, she became an activist for Native American causes through her writing, storytelling, and music. Dreams and Thunder brings together her previously unpublished stories, rare poems, and the libretto of The Sun Dance Opera, a controversial composition because it presented sacred Indian ritual on a public stage. Zitkala-Sa was among the first American Indians to write without the aid of an editor or translator.