Descended from ancient European hounds and used for hunting, herding, and even as a stalker of feral swamp pigs, the history of the Catahoula Leopard Dog has a history that sheds light on the interdependent relationship Louisiana has with its natural environment. Today these energetic and loyal Catahoula is are beloved, serving as the official state dog of Louisiana. This full-color, illustrated reference guide by Walter LeBon synthesizes geography, history, and anthropology to provide a delightful and informative discussion of this singular breed.?

Fiction. Latino/Latina Studies. Inside the great landfill at R�o Azul, �nica and her friends, her family, society's cast-offs, struggle to survive on what those in the city throw away. This story of the "divers" (buzos), the community of Western untouchables who live in landfills and dumps, immediately made Fernando Contreras Castro famous in his native Costa Rica and around Latin America. Now available in English for the first time in Elaine S. Brooks' translation, �NICA LOOKING AT THE SEA tells the story of an underclass invisible to the urban bourgeoisie who produce the trash they eke out a living from, a story no less pertinent in the US and the rest of the English-speaking world than it is in Latin America.

In eight ethereal stories, The Hubris of an Empty Hand encompasses the frailty and complexity of being human. When some divine gifts fall into decidedly earthly hands, the results are almost beyond reckoning for humans and gods both. Through its wide cast of characters and fascinating settings, terrestrial, divine, or somewhere in-between, Mayhar A. Amouzegar's fourth book of fiction takes on timeless questions of love and its permanence, sacrifice, and the human desire to be remembered and known.

What was it like to grow up black and female in the segregated South? To answer this question, LaKisha Simmons blends social history and cultural studies, recreating children's streets and neighborhoods within Jim Crow New Orleans and offering a rare look into black girls' personal lives. Simmons argues that these children faced the difficult task of adhering to middle-class expectations of purity and respectability even as they encountered the daily realities of Jim Crow violence, which included interracial sexual aggression, street harassment, and presumptions of black girls' impurity. Simmons makes use of oral histories, the black and white press, social workers' reports, police reports, girls' fiction writing, and photography to tell the stories of individual girls: some from poor, working-class families; some from middle-class, "respectable" families; and some caught in the Jim Crow judicial system. These voices come together to create a group biography of ordinary girls living in an extraordinary time, girls who did not intend to make history but whose stories transform our understanding of both segregation and childhood.