Books published by publisher Galison Books

WINNER New Mexico - Arizona Book AwardWINNER Arizona Authors Association Book AwardWINNER Will Rogers Medallion AwardFINALIST Reading the West Book AwardHe already owned and managed two ranches and needed a third about as much as he needed a permanent migraine: that's what Alan Day said every time his friend pestered him about an old ranch in South Dakota. But in short order, he proudly owned 35,000 pristine grassy acres. The opportunity then dropped into his lap to establish a sanctuary for unadoptable wild horses previously warehoused by the Bureau of Land Management. After Day successfully lobbied Congress, those acres became Mustang Meadows Ranch, the first government-sponsored wild horse sanctuary established in the United States.The Horse Lover is Day's personal history of the sanctuary's vast enterprise, with its surprises and pleasures and its plentiful dangers, frustrations, and heartbreak. Day's deep connection with the animals in his care is clear from the outset, as is his maverick philosophy of horse-whispering, with which he trained fifteen hundred wild horses. The Horse Lover weaves together Day's recollections of his cowboying adventures astride some of his best horses, all of which taught him indispensable lessons about loyalty, perseverance, and hope. This heartfelt memoir reveals the Herculean task of balancing the requirements of the government with the needs of wild horses.

On April 1, 1931, newspapers in all parts of the country announced in giant headlines that Knute Rockne had died in a plane crash in Kansas. Who was Rockne, age forty-three, to receive all this attention? As head coach of the Notre Dame football team, he was a celebrity whose face and voice were familiar to millions through magazines, newspapers, and radio. At Notre Dame, he himself had been a great football player. After graduation, he remained to teach chemistry and coach track and football. At thirty, he was named head football coach for the Fighting Irish, and over the next thirteen years, his team went undefeated five times. Rockne coached stars such as George Gipp, one of the most talented men ever to play the game, and the “Four Horsemen,” the most famous backfield in football history. He raised the status of the coaching profession and helped develop Notre Dame’s nationwide following of millions of Irish and other Catholics, many of whom had never even entered a college classroom. In Rockne Jerry Brondfield has recaptured the magnetism that made Rockne great. In this dramatic and peculiarly American story, he shows how a Norwegian immigrant could gain lasting fame as the coach of an American game at a university founded by Frenchmen and associated with the Irish.

In 1937, when local beer baron Emil Sick stepped in, the Seattle Indians were a struggling minor-league baseball team teetering on collapse. Moved to mix baseball and beer by his good friend and fellow brewer, New York Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert, Sick built a new stadium and turned the team into a civic treasure. The Rainiers (newly named after the beer) set attendance records and won Pacific Coast League titles in 1939, ’40, ’41, ’51, and ’55. The story of the Rainiers spans the end of the Great Depression, World War II, the rise of the airline industry, and the incursion of Major League Baseball into the West Coast (which ultimately spelled doom for the club). It features well-known personalities such as Babe Ruth, who made an unsuccessful bid to manage the team; Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby, who did manage the Rainiers; and Ron Santo, a batboy who went on to a storied career with the Chicago Cubs. Mixing traditional baseball lore with tales of mischief, Pitchers of Beer relates the twenty-seven-year history of the Rainiers, a history that captures the timeless appeal of baseball, along with the local moments and minutiae that bring the game home to each and every one of us. Pitchers of Beer showcases fifty-two photographs of players and memorabilia from noted Northwest baseball collector David Eskenazi.

Remembered in name but underappreciated in legacy, Forrest “Phog” Allen arguably influenced the game of basketball more than anyone else. In the first half of the twentieth century Allen took basketball from a gentlemanly, indoor recreation to the competitive game that would become a worldwide sport. Succeeding James Naismith as the University of Kansas’s basketball coach in 1907, Allen led the Jayhawks for thirty-nine seasons and holds the record for most wins at that school, with 590. He also helped create the NCAA tournament and brought basketball to the Olympics. Allen changed the way the game is played, coached, marketed, and presented. Scott Morrow Johnson reveals Allen as a master recruiter, a transformative coach, and a visionary basketball mind. Adolph Rupp, Dean Smith, Wilt Chamberlain, and many others benefited from Allen’s knowledge of and passion for the game. But Johnson also delves into Allen’s occasionally tumultuous relationships with Naismith, the NCAA, and University of Kansas administrators.Phog: The Most Influential Man in Basketball chronicles this complex man’s life, telling for the first time the full story of the man whose name is synonymous with Kansas basketball and with the game itself.

American Indian Stories, first published in 1921, is a collection of childhood stories, allegorical fiction, and an essay. One of the most famous Sioux writers and activists of the modern era, Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Bonnin) recalled legends and tales from oral tradition and used experiences from her life and community to educate others about the Yankton Sioux. Determined, controversial, and visionary, she creatively worked to bridge the gap between her own culture and mainstream American society and advocated for Native rights on a national level. Susan Rose Dominguez provides a new introduction to this edition.

The story of the adorable dragon with a heart of gold is now available as a gift edition board book!What do dragons learn at Madam Dragon's school?How to fly . . . How to roar . . . How to breathe fire!Zog is the most eager student in the class, but he's also the most accident prone. With each test (and each bump, bruise, or scrape), his dream of earning a gold star seems further away than ever.But a mysterious girl keeps coming to his rescue. And when Zog faces his toughest test yet, she may be just the person to help Zog win classroom glory!

In the Shadow of the Moon tells the story of the most exciting and challenging years in spaceflight, with two superpowers engaged in a titanic struggle to land one of their own people on the moon. Drawing on interviews with astronauts, cosmonauts, their families, technicians, and scientists, as well as rarely seen Soviet and American government documents, the authors craft a remarkable story of the golden age of spaceflight as both an intimate human experience and a rollicking global adventure. From the Gemini flights to the Soyuz space program to the earliest Apollo missions, including the legendary first moon landing, their book draws a richly detailed picture of the space race as an endeavor equally endowed with personal meaning and political significance.

In 1874, when Martha Summerhayes came as a bride to Fort Russell in Wyoming Territory, she "saw not much in those first few days besides bright buttons, blue uniforms, and shining swords," but soon enough the hard facts of army life began to intrude. Remonstrating with her husband, Jack, that she had only three rooms and a kitchen instead of "a whole house," she was informed that "women are not reckoned in at all in the War Department," which also failed to appreciate that "'lieutenants' wives needed quite as much as colonels’ wives." In fact, Martha had only a short time to enjoy her new quarters, for in June her husband’s regiment was ordered to Arizona, "that dreaded and then unknown land." Although Martha Summerhayes’s recollections span a quarter of a century and life at a dozen army posts, the heart of this book concerns her experiences during the 1870s in Arizona, where (as Dan L. Thrapp observes in his introduction) the harsh climate and "perennial natural inconveniences from rattlesnakes to cactus thorns and white desperadoes, all made [it] a less than desirable posting for the married man and his wife." First privately printed in 1908, Vanished Arizona was so well-received that in 1910 Mrs. Summerhayes prepared a new edition (reprinted here), which was published in 1911, the year of her death. Among "the essential primary records of the frontier-military West," the book "retains its place securely because of the narrative skill of the author, her delight in life—all life, including even, or perhaps principally, army life and people—and because it is such a joy to read.

Jane Grigson’s Fruit Book includes a wealth of recipes, plain and fancy, ranging from apple strudel to watermelon sherbet. Jane Grigson is at her literate and entertaining best in this fascinating compendium of recipes for forty-six different fruits. Some, like pears, will probably seem homely and familiar until you've tried them á la chinoise. Others, such as the carambola, described by the author as looking “like a small banana gone mad,” will no doubt be happy discoveries. You will find new ways to use all manner of fruits, alone or in combination with other foods, including meats, fish, and fowl, in all phases of cooking from appetizers to desserts. And, as always, in her brief introductions Grigson will both educate and amuse you with her pithy comments on the histories and varieties of all the included fruits. All ingredients are given in American as well as metric measures, and this edition includes an extensive glossary, compiled by Judith Hill, which not only translates unfamiliar terminology but also suggests American equivalents for British and Continental varieties where appropriate.