The “vivid, provocative” untold story of how restrictive policies are preventing China from becoming the world’s largest economy (Evan Osnos). Dexter Roberts lived in Beijing for two decades working as a reporter on economics, business and politics for Bloomberg Businessweek. In The Myth of Chinese Capitalism, Roberts explores the reality behind today’s financially-ascendant China and pulls the curtain back on how the Chinese manufacturing machine is actually powered. He focuses on two places: the village of Binghuacun in the province of Guizhou, one of China’s poorest regions that sends the highest proportion of its youth away to become migrants; and Dongguan, China’s most infamous factory town located in Guangdong, home to both the largest number of migrant workers and the country’s biggest manufacturing base. Within these two towns and the people that move between them, Roberts focuses on the story of the Mo family, former farmers-turned-migrant-workers who are struggling to make a living in a fast-changing country that relegates one-half of its people to second-class status via household registration, land tenure policies and inequality in education and health care systems. In The Myth of Chinese Capitalism, Dexter Roberts brings to life the problems that China and its people face today as they attempt to overcome a divisive system that poses a serious challenge to the country’s future development. In so doing, Roberts paints a boots-on-the-ground cautionary picture of China for a world now held in its financial thrall. Praise for The Myth of Chinese Capitalism “A gimlet-eyed look at an economic miracle that may not be so miraculous after all.” —Kirkus Reviews “A clearheaded and persuasive counter-narrative to the notion that the Chinese economic model is set to take over the world. Readers looking for an informed and nuanced perspective on modern China will find it here.” —Publishers Weekly “A sophisticated and readable take of China’s triumphs and crises. . . . A first-hand witness to China’s transformation over the past quarter century, Roberts credibly challenges the myth of China’s inevitable rise and global dominance.” —Ian Johnson, Pulitzer Prize–winning author and Beijing-based correspondent “A potent mix of personal stories and deft analysis, The Myth of Chinese Capitalism takes a hard look at China’s migrants and rural people.” —Mei Fong, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author of One Child: The Story of China’s Most RadicalExperiment

Montana: A History of Two Centuries first appeared in 1976 and immediately became the standard work in its field. In this thoroughgoing revision, William L. Lang has joined Michael P. Malone and Richard B. Roeder in carrying forward the narrative to the 1990s. Fully twenty percent of the text is new or revised, incorporating the results of new research and new interpretations dealing with pre-history, Native American studies, ethnic history, women's studies, oral history, and recent political history. In addition, the bibliography has been updated and greatly expanded, new maps have been drawn, and new photographs have been selected.

A great deal of reactionary political fire in the Mountain West has been aimed at environmental protection measures that are perceived to have destroyed or diminished the livelihoods of long-time residents. Conventional wisdom sees the economic woes afflicting the region -- declining pay, growing inequality, persistent poverty -- as a direct result of increasingly strict environmental regulations that have crippled natural resource industries such as mining and logging.In Post-Cowboy Economics, economists Thomas Michael Power and Richard Barrett provide a new interpretation of the economy of the Mountain West. Based on evidence from a wide variety of sources, including data on individual employment and income histories of more than 300,000 residents, they clearly demonstrate that the region's economic misfortunes are not the result of changes in regional industrial structure but rather are local manifestations of pervasive national and international trends. The authors: discuss and critique entrenched conventional wisdom and its policy implications present an empirical analysis of changes in the region offer a new interpretation of events affecting the regional economy set forth public policies that will work to protect and enhance the economic well-being of its residents and communitiesThe authors' analysis and interpretation make a compelling case that despite incomes that are low compared to the rest of the country, the region is not suffering from general impoverishment, and that environmental protection, rather than threatening economic well-being, enhances welfare and protects the very source of the economic vitality that the Mountain West enjoys. Throughout, they argue that fearful, crisis driven environmental and economic development policies are unnecessary and inappropriate, and often counterproductive.Post-Cowboy Economics is an important work for professionals and scholars involved with environmental policy, economic development, and resource management, as well as anyone interested in the future of the American West."

2022 Stubbendieck Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize Finalist Toward the end of the nineteenth century, many African Americans moved westward as Greater Reconstruction came to a close. Though, along with Euro-Americans, Black settlers appropriated the land of Native Americans, sometimes even contributing to ongoing violence against Indigenous people, this migration often defied the goals of settler states in the American West. In Black Montana Anthony W. Wood explores the entanglements of race, settler colonialism, and the emergence of state and regional identity in the American West during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By producing conditions of social, cultural, and economic precarity that undermined Black Montanans' networks of kinship, community, and financial security, the state of Montana, in its capacity as a settler colony, worked to exclude the Black community that began to form inside its borders after Reconstruction. Black Montana depicts the history of Montana's Black community from 1877 until the 1930s, a period in western American history that represents a significant moment and unique geography in the life of the U.S. settler-colonial project.

"With a new foreword by Frederick L. Kirschenmann..."

This true story of a Victorian-era young woman who follows her husband to a small town with the improbable name of Gilt Edge, Montana, will remind readers of Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose, the classic novel of a woman's life in the Mountain West. As a young girl, Lillian Weston, the author's grandmother, aspired to be a concert pianist. However, as a young woman in turn-of-the-century New York, she became a newspaper columnist. Her marriage to Frank Hazen took her west in 1899, ending her career as a newspaperwoman. She turned her writing skills to journals, diaries, stories, and poems, which traced her family's life on a frontier that was no longer unspoiled. The Hazens endured brutal winters and dry summers and endeavored to raise cattle and chickens by trial and error. Lillian was an assiduous diarist who included details of her turbulent marriage challenged by Frank's bad business deals. The details of birth control and child rearing, gambling and prostitution, education and health care are all part of this story, offering glimpses into everyday life that often go unreported in the larger story of western expansion.

Perhaps once in a generation it is possible for a historian to reinterpret the long sweep of an area and a period in our history. K. Ross Toole has chosen Montana for this purpose, and the brilliant success of his achievement must be apparent to all who read these pages. He has consciously avoided a systematic presentation of the history of this "uncommon land," Instead, he has chosen to put the great and many of the smaller but significant episodes of a century and a half into new perspective. The record, in its colorful and romantic aspects, stretches from the days of Lewis and Clark; and in its more recent aspects, from the subjugation of the Indian to the predominance of big mining and timber enterprises. The resulting portrait is sharply drawn by a man who knows not only how to interpret the remote and recent past but how to write with great effect. Montana is best remembered by most Americans as the state in which the Indian played his last dramatic role with the annihilation of General George Armstrong Custer. But it was also the area in which the fur trade had its roots; where the sheepherders and the cattlemen vied with each other for the right to graze the land; where the "honyockers" tried-and often failed to master the land and the seasons; where copper interests have played a powerful role in politics and in the lives of the people; and where, only recently, the oil industry has followed the boom-and-bust cycle so well known in the state. This story of Montana points up particularly the position which is and has been occupied by the state in relation to the nation as a whole.