William Vacchiano (1912–2005) was principal trumpet with the New York Philharmonic from 1942 to 1973, and taught at Juilliard, the Manhattan School of Music, the Mannes College of Music, Queens College, and Columbia Teachers College. While at the Philharmonic, Vacchiano performed under the batons of Arturo Toscanini, Bruno Walter, Dimitri Mitropoulos, and Leonard Bernstein and played in the world premieres of almost 200 pieces by such composers as Vaughan Williams, Copland, and Barber. Vacchiano was important not only for his performances, but also for his teaching. His students have held the principal chairs of many major orchestras and are prominent teachers themselves, and they have enriched non-classical music as well. Two of his better known students are Miles Davis and Wynton Marsalis. Last Stop, Carnegie Hall features an overview of the life of this very private artist, based on several personal interviews conducted by Brian A. Shook and Vacchiano’s notes for his own unpublished memoir. Shook also interviewed many of his students and colleagues and includes a chapter containing their recollections. Other important topics include analyses of Vacchiano’s pedagogical methods and his interpretations of important trumpet pieces, his “rules of orchestral performance,” and his equipment. A discography, a bibliography of …

The poems in Circles Where the Head Should Be are full of objects and oddities, bits of news, epic catalogues, and a cast of characters hoping to make sense of it all. Underneath the often whimsical surface, however, lies a search for those connections we long for but so often miss, and a wish for art to bridge the gaps. “Circles Where the Head Should Be has its own distinctive voice, a lively intelligence, insatiable curiosity, and a decided command of form. These qualities play off one another in ways that instruct and delight. An irresistible book.”—J. D. McClatchy, author of Mercury Dressing: Poems, judge

What happens when an expert on grief is faced with the slow decline of her beloved mother? Like A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis, Singing Mother Home offers an inside look at the struggles of an “expert” in coping with loss. Donna S. Davenport was forced to rethink the traditional academic approach to the process, which implied that the goal of grief resolution was to end the attachment to the loved one. Instead, she embarked on a personal exploration of her own anticipatory grief. This intimate narrative forms the core of her book. It is emotionally wrenching, but it also provides hope for those going through similar experiences. Just as Davenport used her family's tradition of singing to comfort her mother, readers will be encouraged to find their own sources of comfort in family and legacy. The book concludes by describing psychological approaches to grief and recommending further reading. “This is a unique book by a professional who understands the field of loss and grief. . . . Poignantly heartbreaking.”--Melba Vasquez, President, American Psychology Association's Division on Counseling Psychology

James M. Davis is a retired businessman who lives in Midland, Texas, with his wife of over six decades, Jean. He served on active duty in the U.S. Army Air Forces for more than two and a half years during World War II, and then in the Air Force reserves until 1961. David L. Snead, the editor, is an associate professor of history at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. He received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Virginia and is the author of The Gaither Committee, Eisenhower, and the Cold War and George E. Browne: An American Doughboy in World War I.

Américo Paredes (1915-1999) was a folklorist, scholar, and professor at the University of Texas at Austin who is widely acknowledged as one of the founding scholars of Chicano Studies. Born in Brownsville, Texas, along the southern U.S.-Mexico Border, Paredes grew up between two worlds—one written about in books, the other sung about in ballads and narrated in folktales. After service in World War II, Paredes entered the University of Texas at Austin, where he completed his Ph.D. in 1956. With the publication of his dissertation, “With His Pistol in His Hand”: A Border Ballad and Its Hero in 1958, Paredes soon emerged as a challenger to the status quo. His book questioned the mythic nature of the Texas Rangers and provided an alternative counter-cultural narrative to the existing traditional narratives of Walter Prescott Webb and J. Frank Dobie. For the next forty years Paredes was a brilliant teacher and prolific writer who championed the preservation of border culture and history. He was a soft-spoken, at times temperamental, yet fearless professor. In 1970 he co-founded the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin and is credited with introducing the concept of Greater Mexico, decades before its …

From book jacket: In the humid forests of Cape Horn, a single tree can host more than 100 species of little epiphyte plants. The floor of the forest and the rocks are also covered by numerous species of liverworts, mosses, and lichens. The decision to stop at a tree or rock and explore these “miniature forests” generates an authentic ecotourism experience. In a small area we can spend several minutes or hours with a magnifying glass or camera discovering the colors, shapes, and textures of the most diverse organisms of Cape Horn. This guidebook enhances exploration by providing information to understand the architecture, life cycles, and identification of taxonomic groups of the organisms that form them. For example, when viewing a yellow orange organism, the full color pictures and text in the guidebook illustrate that what you are viewing on the inter-tidal rocks is a crustose lichen, with a well-defined circular structure belonging to the genus Caloplaca that enjoys a broad distribution in inter-tidal zones of Arctic and Antarctic areas. The authors of this guidebook also provide a novel twist on other, more traditional field guides to bryophytes and lichens by introducing the innovative, sustainable tourism activity of “ecotourism with …

In the early 1870s, Hubert H. Bancroft and his assistants set out to record the memoirs of early Californios, one of them being eighty-three-year-old Don José María Amador, a former “Forty-Niner” during the California Gold Rush and soldado de cuera at the Presidio of San Francisco. Amador tells of reconnoitering expeditions into the interior of California, where he encountered local indigenous populations. He speaks of political events of Mexican California and the widespread confiscation of the Californios’ goods, livestock, and properties when the United States took control. A friend from Mission Santa Cruz, Lorenzo Asisara, also describes the harsh life and mistreatment the Indians faced from the priests. Both the Amador and Asisara narratives were used as sources in Bancroft’s writing but never published themselves. Gregorio Mora-Torres has now rescued them from obscurity and presents their voices in English translation (with annotations) and in the original Spanish on facing pages. This bilingual edition will be of great interest to historians of the West, California, and Mexican American studies. “This book presents a very convincing and interesting narrative about Mexican California. Its frankness and honesty are refreshing.”–Richard Griswold del Castillo, San Diego State University

The subantarctic forests of South America are the world’s southernmost forested ecosystems. The birds have sung in these austral forests for millions of years; the Yahgan and Mapuche peoples have handed down their bird stories from generation to generation for hundreds of years. In Multi-ethnic Bird Guide of the Subantarctic Forests of South America, Ricardo Rozzi and his collaborators present a unique combination of bird guide and cultural ethnography. The book includes entries on fifty bird species of southern Chile and Argentina, among them the Magellanic Woodpecker, Rufous-Legged Owl, Ringed Kingfisher, Buff-Necked Ibis, Giant Hummingbird, and Andean Condor. Each bird is named in Yahgan, Mapudungun, Spanish, English, and scientific nomenclature, followed by a description, full color photographs, the bird’s distribution map, habitat and lifestyle, and its history in the region. Each entry is augmented further with indigenous accounts of the bird in history and folklore. “Highly original in its approach of combining information on natural history and biodiversity with information on the region’s human cultural and linguistic diversity.”—Chris Elphick, coauthor of The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior