By Judith Glyde, Professor Emeritus (Formerly professor of cello and chamber music at the College of Music from 1992-2014)

(Coffeetown Press, 225 pages; 2024)

Judith Glyde, in the fall of 1999, spent three months in the Khumbu region of the Himalayas. Following in the footsteps of the Buddhist teacher who enters contemplative isolation to study, she experienced these months in a secluded village, Sengma, re-exploring the six suites for solo cello by Bach.

Upon her return, Judith wrote: "Where shall I start? Sengma was a remote, isolated Sherpa village of only several houses facing tremendous 22-23000-foot peaks. My accomplishment was considerable: memorizing the six Bach suites; meeting many challenges, physical and spiritual; and living with a Sherpa family. Trekking to see Mount Everest was an extraordinary experience and the fulfillment of a grand obsession. I was in awe of this top of the world-the 'Land of Snows.' The experience, once put into hindsight (as I am still affected by the isolation of those three months), will remain the adventure of a lifetime-the most inspiring task I have ever accomplished."

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By Phoebe S. K. Young

(Oxford University Press, 432 pages; 2021) 

Camping appears to be a simple proposition, a time-honored way of getting away from it all. Pack up the car and hit the road in search of a shady spot in the great outdoors. For a modest fee, reserve the basic infrastructure--a picnic table, a parking spot, and a place to build a fire. Pitch the
tent and unroll the sleeping bags. Sit under the stars with friends or family and roast some marshmallows. This book reveals that, for all its appeal, the simplicity of camping is deceptive, its history and meanings far from obvious.

Why do some Americans find pleasure in sleeping outside, particularly when so many others, past and present, have had to do so for reasons other than recreation? Never only a vacation choice, camping has been something people do out of dire necessity and as a tactic of political protest. Yet the dominant interpretation of camping as a modern recreational ideal has obscured the connections to these other roles. A closer look at the history of camping since the Civil War reveals a deeper significance of this American tradition and its links to core beliefs about nature and national
belonging.

Camping Grounds rediscovers unexpected and interwoven histories of sleeping outside. It uses extensive research to trace surprising links between veterans, tramps, John Muir, African American freedpeople, Indian communities, and early leisure campers in the nineteenth century; tin-can tourists, federal campground designers, Depression-era transients, family campers, backpacking enthusiasts, and political activists in the twentieth century; and the crisis of the unsheltered and the tent-based Occupy Movement in the twenty-first. These entwined stories show how Americans camp to claim a place in the American republic and why the outdoors is critical to how we relate to nature, the nation, and each other.

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By Karen Auvinen (Bio’87; MEngl’95)

(Scribner, 320 pages; 2018)




During a difficult time, Karen Auvinen flees to a primitive cabin in the Rockies to live in solitude as a writer and to embrace all the beauty and brutality nature has to offer. When a fire incinerates every word she has ever written and all of her possessions—except for her beloved dog Elvis, her truck, and a few singed artifacts—Karen embarks on a heroic journey to reconcile her desire to be alone with her need for community.

In the evocative spirit of works by Annie Dillard, Gretel Ehrlich, and Mary Oliver, Karen’s rich and compulsively readable memoir is as much an inward as it is an outward pilgrimage. Her pursuit of solace and salvation by shedding trivial ties and living in close harmony with nature, along with her account of finding community and love, is sure to resonate with all of us who long for meaning and deeper connection. Rough Beauty is a luminous, lyric exploration of and homage to her forty seasons in the mountains, embracing the unpredictability and grace of living intimately with the forces of nature while making peace with her own wildness.

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By Nan Goodman
(Oxford University Press, 216; 2018)



In Nan Goodman’s book, The Puritan Cosmopolis: The Law of Nations and the Early American Imagination, she traces a sense of kinship that emerged from within the larger realm of Puritan law and literature in late seventeenth-century New England. She argues that these early modern Puritans – connected to the cosmopolis in part through travel, trade, and politics – were also thinking in terms that went beyond feeling affiliated with people in remote places, or what cosmopolitan theorists call "attachment at a distance." In this way Puritan writers and readers were not simply learning about others, but also cultivating an awareness of themselves as ethically related to people all around the world. Such thought experiments originated and advanced through the law, specifically the law of nations, a precursor to international law and an inspiration for much of the imagination and literary expression of cosmopolitanism among the Puritans.

The Puritan Cosmopolis shows that by internalizing the legal theories that pertained to the world at large, the Puritans were able to experiment with concepts of extended obligation, re-conceptualize war, contemplate new ways of cultivating peace, and rewrite the very meaning of Puritan living. Through a detailed consideration of Puritan legal thought, Goodman provides an unexpected link between the Puritans, Jews, and Ottomans in the early modern world and reveals how the Puritan legal and literary past relates to present concerns about globalism and cosmopolitanism.

Goodman is a professor at ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder in English and Jewish Studies and is also the director of the Program in Jewish Studies and the Post-Holocaust American Judaism Archive Project.

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By Brian A. Catlos

(Basic Books, 496; 2018)

Brian A. Catlos’ book, (2018, Basic Books), explores the history of Islamic Spain and displays a complex portrait of how Muslims, Christians and Jews built a sophisticated civilization that transformed the Western world. Catlos is a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder and is the director of the Mediterranean Studies Group on campus. His book will be available on May 1, 2018. The Tattered Cover Aspen Grove in Littleton, ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ will be hosting . The book is available for purchase on May 1, 2018.

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By Craig Jones

(University of California Press, 359 pages; 2017)

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Craig Jones's book (2017, University of California Press) reflects on the Sierra Nevada range and how the mountains have changed the way Americans live. The book combines geology and history to show how the particular forces and conditions that created the Sierra Nevada have influenced daily life in the United States, both in the past and into the present day. Jones is a professor in the Geological Sciences Department at ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ and is affiliated with the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.

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(2017, University of Georgia Press) By Jennifer Fluri, professor of geography

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 (2017, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment) By Masano Yamashita, professor of French and Italian

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 (2017, World Bank Group) By Paul Chinowsky, profesor of engineering

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 (2017, University of Pittsburgh Press) By Juan Dabove, professor of Spanish and Portugese

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