Dina's life is nearing its end. But for Dina, the end is really just the beginning. For months, she's been fighting terminal cancer. She's finally resigned herself to preparing for the end. Her last few weeks are going to be with her sisters, sharing the happy memories of a life well spent. Men are the last thing on her mind. That is, until an afternoon walk along a dusty, country road brings her face to face with an angel. Only this angel is nothing like Dina ever pictured angels would be. 'The man had an easy-going smile. A pair of aviator sunglasses rested on his nose. His dusty Levi's covered long legs that ended in well-worn cowboy boots...He stepped down off the gate and held his hand out. 'Gil.'' Preferring boots and spurs to harps and wings, Gil takes Dina horseback riding. She begins to feel new energy surge through her. And before she realizes it, Dina falls head over heels for Gil. Gil is falling for her too, but his secret identity may get in the way of his feelings. Gil knows he can't hide who he is for much longer. But how can he tell her? Are angels even allowed to fall in love with humans? When Gil leaves to find answers, Dina is devastated. She confides in her sisters, but they think her cancer meds made her dream up the whole relationship. Even though Dina knows the truth, she's growing weaker every day, and the only one who can help her has disappeared. Will tonight's sky be the last one she looks upon? Or will GilLasso the Stars. for Dina?

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year Winner of the Mountains and Plains Book Seller's Association Award "Sprawling in scope. . . . Mr. Egan uses the past powerfully to explain and give dimension to the present." --The New York Times "Fine reportage . . . honed and polished until it reads more like literature than journalism." --Los Angeles Times "They have tried to tame it, shave it, fence it, cut it, dam it, drain it, nuke it, poison it, pave it, and subdivide it," writes Timothy Egan of the West; still, "this region's hold on the American character has never seemed stronger." In this colorful and revealing journey through the eleven states west of the 100th meridian, Egan, a third-generation westerner, evokes a lovely and troubled country where land is religion and the holy war between preservers and possessors never ends. Egan leads us on an unconventional, freewheeling tour: from America's oldest continuously inhabited community, the Ancoma Pueblo in New Mexico, to the high kitsch of Lake Havasu City, Arizona, where London Bridge has been painstakingly rebuilt stone by stone; from the fragile beauty of Idaho's Bitterroot Range to the gross excess of Las Vegas, a city built as though in defiance of its arid environment. In a unique blend of travel writing, historical reflection, and passionate polemic, Egan has produced a moving study of the West: how it became what it is, and where it is going. "The writing is simply wonderful. From the opening paragraph, Egan seduces the reader. . . . Entertaining, thought provoking." --The Arizona Daily Star Weekly "A western breeziness and love of open spaces shines through Lasso the Wind. . . . The writing is simple and evocative." --The Economist

This is a new release of the original 1960 edition.

Catching herself a cowboy was the last thing on Jenna Reed's mind…. Until one moved in with her! Well, technically bull rider Dustin Morgan was staying at her brother's house for the summer—but so was Jenna. Having her high school crush under the same roof was not the way she'd planned on spending her vacation. Especially since Dustin had never, ever so much as flirted with her. But maybe it was time the plain-Jane changed all of that. On the verge of turning thirty, Jenna knew it was high time to go after what she wanted…and she wanted Dustin. Using a magazine article called "Ten Ways to Seduce a Man," she set out to lasso her cowboy. But what would she do with him once she caught him?

Love and loyalties get tested in another gripping LA drama from Lucy Broadbent. Pearl Sash lives the dream. Adoring husband, perfect child, and a glamorous Hollywood Hills mansion. Shame how perfect gets boring, isn't it? Cue the re-entrance of Brett. Dangerous, sexy Brett who she married years ago, and who left her the second his own Hollywood star was rising. Now he's back, wanting to start over. No man ever made her feel so bad. No man ever made her feel so good! Will Pearl make the right decision to get her own Hollywood ending?

This book centers on a foundational moment for Latin American racial constructs. While most contemporary scholarship has focused the explanation for racial tolerance-or its lack-in the colonial period, Marixa Lasso argues that the key to understanding the origins of modern race relations are to be found later, in the Age of Revolution.Lasso rejects the common assumption that subalterns were passive and alienated from Creole-led patriot movements, and instead demonstrates that during Colombia's revolution, free blacks and mulattos (pardos) actively joined and occasionally even led the cause to overthrow the Spanish colonial government. As part of their platform, patriots declared legal racial equality for all citizens, and promulgated an ideology of harmony and fraternity for Colombians of all colors. The fact that blacks were mentioned as equals in the discourse of the revolution and later served in republican government posts was a radical political departure. These factors were instrumental in constructing a powerful myth of racial equality-a myth that would fuel revolutionary activity throughout Latin America.Thus emerged a historical paradox central to Latin American nation-building: the coexistence of the principle of racial equality with actual racism at the very inception of the republic. Ironically, the discourse of equality meant that grievances of racial discrimination were construed as unpatriotic and divisive acts-in its most extreme form, blacks were accused of preparing a race war. Lasso's work brings much-needed attention to the important role of the anticolonial struggles in shaping the nature of contemporary race relations and racial identities in Latin America.

The Panama Canal's untold history—from the Panamanian point of view. Sleuth and scholar Marixa Lasso recounts how the canal’s American builders displaced 40,000 residents and erased entire towns in the guise of bringing modernity to the tropics. The Panama Canal set a new course for the modern development of Central America. Cutting a convenient path from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans, it hastened the currents of trade and migration that were already reshaping the Western hemisphere. Yet the waterway was built at considerable cost to a way of life that had characterized the region for centuries. In Erased, Marixa Lasso recovers the history of the Panamanian cities and towns that once formed the backbone of the republic. Drawing on vast and previously untapped archival sources and personal recollections, Lasso describes the canal’s displacement of peasants, homeowners, and shop owners, and chronicles the destruction of a centuries-old commercial culture and environment. On completion of the canal, the United States engineered a tropical idyll to replace the lost cities and towns—a space miraculously cleansed of poverty, unemployment, and people—which served as a convenient backdrop to the manicured suburbs built exclusively for Americans. By restoring the sounds, sights, and stories of a world wiped clean by U.S. commerce and political ambition, Lasso compellingly pushes back against a triumphalist narrative that erases the contribution of Latin America to its own history.