Yesterday I was delirious, and the day before that, or several before that. Tonight, though, I seem to be aware of everything I’ve ever known . . . . It’s dark, double dark because of the mist that August steams from the Colorado. Yet I can see almost very place I’ve ever been . . . All the men I liked are having drinks with me or yarning around campfires scattered from the Appalachians to the Pacific Coast. All the enemies I’ve fought are visible beyond the muxxles of guns or the points of knives . . . All of the women I’ve wigwamed with, including the two who demanded the law’s blessing, are either smiling or showing they wished they never met me . . . But I could never really belong to civilization, for once I hand helped to create it, I yearned for a place on which it hadn’t laid an ordering hand.

John W. (Jack) Swilling, the founder of Phoenix, is also "the most lied about man" in the history of Arizona Territory. His reputation was fatally injured when he was wrongfully accused of stagecoach robbery and died in Yuma County Jail before he could have a trial.

Part of the self-image of Phoenix is that the city has no history and that anything of importance happened yesterday. Also that Phoenix, the Arizona state capital, is a "clean" city (despite a past of police corruption and social oppression). The "real" Phoenix, easygoing, sun-drenched, a place of ever-expanding development and economic growth, guarantees, it is said, an enviable lifestyle, low taxes, and unfettered personal freedom and opportunity. Little of this is true. Phoenix has been described as one of the least sustainable cities in the country. This sixth largest urban area of the United States has an alarmingly superficial and tourism-oriented discourse among its leaders. This book examines a series of narrative works (novels, theater, chronicles, investigative reporting, personal accounts, editorial cartooning, even a children's television program) that question this discourse in a frequently stinging fashion. The works examined are anchored in a critical understanding of the dominant urban myths of Greater Phoenix, and an awareness of how all the newness, modernity and fun-in-the-sun mentality mask a uniquely dystopian human experience.

Tells the remarkable story of John William "Jack" Swilling, an Arizona pioneer who established mines, built roads and laid out cities, until he was falsely accused of a stagecoach robbery.

The importance of the stagecoach is often overlooked amidst its romance and legend. It was, in fact, Arizona's first, and for a long while only means of public transportation. If you wanted to travel to or within the Territory in the early days, you had better own a horse or a horse and buggy, or be willing to do a lot of walking. With the advent of stage travel in the late 1860s, all that changed, at least for those well enough off to pay the stagecoach fare. Catch the Stage to Phoenix covers the history of stage-coaching in the early days of the Arizona Territory. Stages traveled from Prescott to Phoenix first via Wickenburg and later through the Black Canyon. The drivers, stage station operators and the travelers, as well, deserve medals for their fortitude and bravery.

Embracing the crossroads that made the region distinctive this book reveals how American families have always been characterized by greater diversity than idealizations of the traditional family have allowed. The essays show how family life figured prominently in relations to larger struggles for conquest and control.