Nevada (America the Beautiful, Second)

By R. Conrad Stein

Book Overview

Describes the geography, plants, animals, history, economy, religions, culture, sports, arts, and people of Nevada. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0516210416
• ISBN13: 9780516210414
• Release Date: January 2000
• Publisher: Children's Press(CT)
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 8.2" x 9.5"
• Age Range: 10 to 13 years
• Grade Range: Grades 5 to 8

Customer Reviews

There is not much to Nevada but you would not know from this book

I finally made it to Las Vegas a couple of years ago. It is not really in between any two places, so you cannot really drive through it on the way from some place that is not California to someplace in California the way you can drive through Reno. You really have to go to Las Vegas on purpose. The question then, of course, is how did you do at the tables, on the slots, etc. The answer is I did not gamble when I was in Las Vegas. Why not? Because the first time I was ever in Nevada I was at a gas station in the middle of nowhere (not on the way to Las Vegas), and there was a slot machine. So I took out a quarter, put it in and yanked the bandit's arm. I won two quarters back so I immediately quit, one of the few people on the face of the planet who can honestly say they were to Nevada and doubled their money on the slot machines. R. Conrad Stein is aware that his audience is too young to gamble, so Chapter One in this America the Beautiful Second Series look at Nevada introduces "The Silver State" a place where very little come easy. Once the mines played out it was tourism that became the engine that made Nevada once of the fastest growing states. The history of Nevada as part of the American West is detailed in the next three chapters. Chapter Two, "Nevada's Distant Past," begins with the ancient peoples who left petroglyphs and ends with the first explorers from Spain and the United States. Chapter Three, "Pioneering in the Silver State," tells of the Comstock bonanza and the silver mines led to statehood for Nevada. Chapter Four, "Twentieth-Century Nevada," establishes a clear contrast to the past with the Hoover Dam, gambling, and atomic bomb testing. The geography of Nevada is presented as "Sagebrush and Open Spaces" in Chapter Five, as Stein describes the lay of the land and the hot, dry climate. Chapter Six, "Quiet Villages and Bright Lights," establishes the contrast between the northern part of the state where the cowboys reign, the area around Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevada, and the Mecca that is Las Vegas. "Governing the Silver State" is covered in Chapter Seven, and if young readers do not anticipate the state metal being silver, then they are just not paying attention. More interesting is the Tule duck, a duck decoy made 2,000 years ago that is the state artifact. Chapter Eight, "Nevada at Work," start off talking about the service industry in the state, but covers other aspects of the economy as well. Chapter Nine, "A Look at Nevadans," explains what the population explosion in the state has meant, which has 90 percent of the citizens living in city areas (only California, New Jersey and Hawaii have a greater urban percentage). This is also the chapter where we finally get to this volume's recipe, which is for Basque Garlic Soup (warning: it involves not just garlic but eggs as well). "Entertainment and Fine Arts" is the province of Chapter Ten, which covers basket weaving and literature to go along with le