What has nourished native peoples on this continent since time immemorial, say the editors of this volume, are wellsprings of creativity. "Down at the source," Havasupai singer Dan Hanna assures us, "a spring will always be there." The creative wellspring of American Indian culture is well represented in this anthology, a compilation of stories, songs, poems, and other writings taken from twenty-five years of Sun Tracks: An American Literary Series. Editors Larry Evers and Ofelia Zepeda have gathered the contributions of nineteen Native Americans in compiling this collection. Some are stories from oral traditions, others are autobiographical writings, and some are songs or poems. But all are contemporary, and all have as a unifying element a strong central theme in Native American writing: home places. Some of the contributors define the home place as a center of established values, while others speak of its cultural or physical geography. Healing powers are often found at home places. Home is a place to defend against those who would reduce it to insignificance, a place to reclaim, or a place reclaimed but not yet realized. One writer recalls a home that must be pulled from deep beneath the waters of the Columbia River. By listening to these stories of home places, the reader can gain a new appreciation of the contemporary verbal expressions of Native American communities. Home Places, note the editors, "asks you to listen to Native American signers, storytellers, and writers, and in this way to celebrate the wellsprings of creativity that continue to flow from the home places in Native America."

Notes on literature and history.

As environmental deterioration became a major political issue near the end of the twentieth century, activists in Nova Scotia stood together to defend the places they called home. They cooperated to protect local environments and economies, but they disagreed about the causes of environmental problems, the role of humanity in nature, and the place of environmentalists in the political process. In Defence of Home Places examines the diversity of environmental activism in Nova Scotia, illustrating how radicals and conservatives combined efforts to achieve early legislative and social success. It also chronicles the debates and disagreements over fundamental principles that then weakened and divided the powerful environmental movement. Placing the evolution of Nova Scotian environmental activism within a broader theoretical framework, Mark R. Leeming considers its development in national and international contexts, examining the environmental movement itself along with the choices and tactics that brought about its greatest successes and failures.

These are all true stories written to entertain and amuse you. It is very informative and educational as we visit the culture of Africa where I petted a lion, and trips to the pyramids of Mexico and Guatemala. I tasted muskox in Greenland and visited the geysers in Iceland. Come with me on a Pony Trek in Lesotho.

Of importance to architects, folklorists, cultural historians, and anyone interested in the Ozarks, this fascinating examination of the Ozark house is a way toward understanding the mind of the inhabitants and their way of life.