Nevada's highly individualistic political culture has produced a conservative political philosophy in an open society. Economic developments resulting from mining and gambling reinforced and heightened the individualistic ethic that many early settlers brought to the frontier state. This ethic is also evident in the opposition of most Nevadans to big government, big labor, and big business. Belief in limited government partially explains the apparent anomaly of the electorate's backing a pro-choice position on abortion while opposing the Equal Rights Amendment. The book discusses the important roles played by Nevada's present U.S. senators in two of the state's ongoing controversies with the federal government: the longstanding water rights dispute between Native Americans, backed by the federal government, and Nevada's ranchers; and the decade-long fight against the establishment of the nation's first permanent nuclear waste depository at Yucca Mountain. Don W. Driggs is Professor of Political Science Emeritus at the University of Nevada, Reno. He is the author of The Constitution of the State of Nevada: A Commentary. Leonard E. Goodall is a professor of management and public administration at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He is the author of numerous works, including State Politics and Higher Education.

Since the beginning of the reservation era, the bitter conflict between Indians and non-Indians over water rights was largely confined to the courtroom. But in the 1980s the federal government began to emphasize negotiated settlements over lawsuits, and the settlements are changing water rights in fundamental waysÑnot only for tribes but also for non-Indian communities that share scarce water resources with Indians. In Native Waters, Daniel McCool describes the dramatic impact these settlements are having both on Indian country and on the American West as a whole. Viewing the settlements as a second treaty era, he considers whether they will guarantee the water future of reservationsÑor, like treaties of old, will require tribes to surrender vast resources in order to retain a small part of their traditional homelands. As one tribal official observed, "It's like your neighbors have been stealing your horses for many years, and now we have to sit down and decide how many of those horses they get to keep." Unlike technical studies of water policy, McCool's book is a readable account that shows us real people attempting to end real disputes that have been going on for decades. He discusses specific water settlements using a combination of approachesÑfrom personal testimony to traditional social science methodologyÑto capture the richness, complexity, and human texture of the water rights conflict. By explaining the processes and outcomes in plain language and grounding his presentation in relevant explanations of Indian culture, he conveys the complexity of the settlements for readers from a wide range of disciplines. Native Waters illustrates how America is coming to grips with an issue that has long been characterized by injustice and conflict, seeking to enhance our understanding of the settlements in the hope that this understanding will lead to better settlements for all parties. As one of the first assessments of a policy that will have a pervasive impact for centuries to come, it shows that how we resolve Indian water claims tells us a great deal about who we are as a nation and how we confront difficult issues involving race, culture, and the environment.

From “constructive contributors”" to “deviant destroyers,” government guerrillas work clandestinely against the best wishes of their superiors. These public servants are dissatisfied with the actions of the organizations for which they work, but often choose not to go public with their concerns. In her Third Edition of The Ethics of Dissent, Rosemary O’Leary shows that the majority of guerrilla government cases are the manifestation of inevitable tensions between bureaucracy and democracy, which yield immense ethical and organizational challenges that all public managers must learn to navigate.