In addition to Reno’s Big Gamble, Dr. Barber has contributed to and edited books, and published numerous book reviews and articles for both scholarly and general audiences. Some examples are provided here.
Cities, Sagebrush, and Solitude: Urbanization and Cultural Conflict in the Great Basin (2015)
The chapter “Errant into the Wilderness: Reno’s Acts Against Nature,” on Reno’s relationship with its physical environment, appears in the edited collection, Cities, Sagebrush, and Solitude (2015, University of Nevada Press). The book explores the transformation of the largest desert in North America, the Great Basin, into America’s last urban frontier. In recent decades Las Vegas, Reno, Salt Lake City, and Boise have become the anchors for sprawling metropolitan regions. This population explosion has been fueled by the maturing of Las Vegas as the nation’s entertainment capital, the rise of Reno as a magnet for multitudes of California expatriates, the development of Salt Lake City’s urban corridor along the Wasatch Range, and the growth of Boise’s celebrated high-tech economy and hip urban culture. The blooming of cities in a fragile desert region poses a host of environmental challenges. The policies required to manage their impact, however, often collide with an entrenched political culture that has long resisted cooperative or governmental effort. The alchemical mixture of three ingredients–cities, aridity, and a libertarian political outlook–makes the Great Basin a compelling place to study. This book addresses a pressing question: are large cities ultimately sustainable in such a fragile environment?
We Were All Athletes: Women’s Athletics and Title IX at the University of Nevada (2011)
The oral history book, We Were All Athletes: Women’s Athletics and Title IX at the University of Nevada, published in 2011 by the University of Nevada Oral History Program, was co-edited by Alicia Barber, Allison Tracy, and Mary Larsen. The book weaves together excerpts from interviews with 48 current and former coaches, student athletes, administrators, and community supporters to describe how the University of Nevada, Reno built a successful women’s athletics program. Through the decades, the university not only complied with Title IX standards, but gained national recognition for excelling in that endeavor. Read an article about this volume here. The entire volume can be read and downloaded here.
Imagining the Big Open: Nature, Identity, and Play in the New West (2003)
The chapter “Reno’s Silver Legacy: Gambling on the Past in the Urban New West” appears in the edited volume, Imagining the Big Open: Nature, Identity, and Play in the New West, published by the University of Utah Press in 2003.
“The American West has long played a role in our consciousness as a place apart, a site of perpetual optimism and romanticism. In Imagining the Big Open a wide range of scholars deftly examine our projections upon and uses of the New West—a projection that not only includes how we imagine the West but how we use Western places. Addressing the history, popular culture, geography, and public policy of the region the contributors unravel our collective psyche where SUVs and REI cards exist in symbiosis with the wilderness movement and Sierra Club memberships.”
Reno Magazine (2005-2009)
From 2005-2009, Barber’s local history column called “Reno Revisited” appeared in Reno magazine. Some examples are included here.
Reno Magazine Jan-Feb 2007
Reno Magazine March-April 2009
Reno Magazine May-June 2009