Tahoe beneath the Surface

Sneak Preview and Upcoming Events

 

Sneak a peek "beneath the covers" of my new book, Tahoe Beneath the Surface--now available from Heyday.

First-time Tahoe visitor? This is the place to begin exploring. But even lifelong Lakers will find new surprises hidden on every page. 

Want to learn even more?  Curious about reviews and upcoming events?  Just scroll down "deeper" on this webpage.  Or...

• Visit my Facebook Page: Tahoe beneath the Surface on Facebook
• Visit my Flickr Photostream at "Tahoe Beneath the Surface"
• Follow me on Twitter @scottlankford
• View on-the-spot video clips about Tahoe on my Youtube Channel
• Click on the Advance Praise link to your right to see what others have been saying.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TAHOE beneath the SURFACE -- EVENTS CALENDAR

 

Thursday, October 28, 2012 at 11:00 a.m. Foothill College Native American Heritage Month

 Scott Lankford will present a slide/lecture on the life and times of Pyramid Paiute leader Sarah Winnemucca. 

Location:  Hearthside Lounge (adjacent to Foothill College Bookstore)

The lecture is free and open to the public.  Campus parking $2.

 

Sunday , Jan 16 from 2-3 p.m.

Squaw Valley Institute.  Scott Lankford will read from and sign copies of his new book, Tahoe beneath the Surface, accompanied by a slideshow. 

July Book Tour Poster!

A Tahoe Tsunami of events and appearances!

Download Tahoe July Book Tour Poster final

Amazing new 4-minute Promotional Video

Filmed by my professional photographer friend joSon -- who launched his career at (where else?) Lake Tahoe.  

Tahoe Book 4 Minute Video

Keep Tahoe Bronze!

Tahoe beneath the Surface just won the Bronze Medal as ForeWord's 2011 Nature Book of the Year!

National Nature Book of the Year Awards

Tahology in Ten Minutes Video

10,0o0 years of history in ten minutes -- a preview of my standard Tahology lecture -- condensed from a speech delivered to the Squaw Valley Institute in December 2009!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4sJNsW1g28

ForeWord Nature Book of the Year 2010 Nomination

Thrilled and honored to learn that Tahoe beneath the Surface was nominated as 2010 Nature Book of the Year! 

ForeWord Award Nomination

Tahology in Ten Minutes Video

Highlights from my Squaw Valley Institute talk January 2011.

Tahology Talk

Glowing Review from the East Bay Express

Two Native American slaves of gold-rush icon John Sutter risked their lives to rescue the stranded Donner Party in that tragic snowed-out winter of 1846-7, only to be shot in the back and cannibalized by the very pioneers they were attempting to rescue, according to Scott Lankford in Tahoe Beheath the Surface: The Hidden Stories of America's Largest Mountain Lake. Published by Berkeley's Heyday, this intriguing volume examines the history, myths, and legends surrounding that lovely getaway.

North Tahoe Bonanza Interview

Notes from my recent chat with the Bonanza newspaper's Matt Renda.

Tahoe Bonanza Interview

Bathymetric Maps of Tahoe beneath the Surface

Marvelous multicolor maps of Tahoe's hidden depths are available from the US Geological Survey

Flattering Notice in "Sacramento News and Review"!

Generous review in Sacramento's taste-maker!

Sacramento News and Review

Bay Citizen Interview with NYT Columnist Scott James

My new Bay Citizen interview with New York Times columnist Scott James is now online (wahoo!). You can find the Bay Citizen online at this website and in The New York Times’s Bay Area report, and soon, via mobile applications.

Bay Citizen interview Nov 30, 2010

Inspiring new Tahoe beneath the Surface Video!

View the insiring new HD promo video by my true-blue professional photogapher friend joSon.  View more of joSon's internationally-acclaimed work at josonphoto.com

New Promo Video click here.

Podcast of my Oct 4 2010 NPR Interview!

I was interviewed by Jeffrey Callison on his daily radio show "Insight,"  broadcast from the NPR affiliate in Sacramento, California.  My segment is at the 30 minute mark in this one-hour-long program.

NPR Sacramento Interview Oct 4 2010

Sacramento Bee praises "Tahoe Beneath the Surface"

"Tahoe is a worldwide travel destination in our back yard, but Lankford doesn't take that for granted. Here, he explores the lake's influence on history, culture, politics and naturalism."  --Books and Media

Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/09/27/3058234/jane-austen-solves-crimes-when.html#ixzz10kM7zwdj

Writers around the Lake Book Launch Event!

Join me -- and a dozen other notable Tahoe authors -- for a celebration of Writers around the Lake on Sept 17 beginning at 7:00 p.m. at the historic  Valhalla Grand Hall on the South Shore.

Tahoe beneath the Surface won't be available for purchase at this event -- it's coming out in October -- but I will present a brief "preview" reading in conjunction with the other featured authors.  Plus plenty of wine and cheese for all.   

Writers around the Lake

Other Books by Scott Lankford

My award-winning collection of Muir quotations,  "Northwest Passages:  From the Pen of John Muir," is still happily in print after all these years.  First published in 1988 -- while I was in grad school at Stanford  -- the book features selected quotations from Muir's 1888 journals during his trip to Lake Tahoe and beyond illumined by glorious woodcut illustrations by California artist Andrea Hendricks.  Winner of the Benjamin Franklin Library Award, the "Introduction" also contains my earliest research into the hidden literary history of Lake Tahoe.  Sometimes the seeds we plant bear sweeter fruit than expected.

Northwest Passages on Amazon.com

Northwest Passages Book Review

Advance Praise from Mae-lee Chai

TAHOE BENEATH THE SURFACE opened my eyes to a history of California and America that I never knew existed. From the prehistoric trees discovered beneath the surface of Lake Tahoe to weird "coincidences" linking Jack Ruby, JFK and Marilyn Monroe to Tahoe, the book is full of surprises. Scott Lankford has a very appealing writing style that makes complex events easy to understand and exciting.  I especially appreciate Lankford’s decision to include the history of the native peoples who lived around Tahoe as well as the hidden history of the Chinese railroad workers who literally carved their way through the Tahoe Sierra. This book is a fascinating and highly readable gem! –May-lee Chai, author of DRAGON CHICA and THE GIRL FROM PURPLE MOUNTAIN

Advance Praise from Leo Chavez

"Like the lake itself, a sparkling, revealing depiction of the characters and forces that have shaped one of our national treasures. A compelling read to keep Tahoe Blue." --Leo Chavez, President, Sierra College

Advance Praise from Tom Lutz

"This book is pure pleasure.  Equally at home in nature and culture, the past and the present, Scott Lankford reflects on Tahoe from the deep geological past to contemporary ecological threats, writing about all of it with a lover’s fervor and respect, a keen eye, and sparkling wit.   Lankford knows mountains, having walked the Continental Divide across Colorado and climbed on Everest, Mt. Kilimanjaro, and the Brooks Range.  He knows his history and the region’s literature, from oral traditions to the famous Gilded Age literary types who holed up in its woods to recent writers like Maxine Hong Kingston, Gary Snyder, and Michael Ondaatje.  He knows Lake Tahoe from top to bottom, from shore to shore, from the Native American inhabitants before Europeans arrived to Sarah Winnemucca and the Donner party, to prohibition rumrunners, Frank Sinatra, and the pre-Las Vegas gangsters who brought us gambling as we know it to the contemporary biologists and hydrologists dealing with the lake’s problems and promise.  I learned something new on every page."  --Tom Lutz, author of Crying: The Natural and Cultural History of Tears and Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers and Loungers.

Advance Praise from Greg Sarris

 "What a wonder Scott Lankford has created in this book.  Beneath The Surface, indeed.  Scott Lankford shows us many heretofore unseen precious gems of Tahoe life and history, and those gems are presented so clearly, as if through the crystalline waters of the blue lake itself.  A must read for anyone interested in Lake Tahoe, and, for that matter, for anyone interested in a good story of a particular landscape, in this case the largest mountain lake in America. – Greg Sarris, award-winning Native American screenwriter, playwright, and novelist.

Advance Praise from Jonah Raskin

“For years I thought that ‘Lakers’ were a basketball team from Los Angeles. Now I know from reading Scott Lankford’s superlative new book that “Lakers” are also fans of Lake Tahoe, a place that has inspired the imaginations of Californians, and visitors to California from around the world. Tahoe Beneath the Surface does exactly what the title suggests the book will do. It does indeed go beneath the surface of the lake, and far beneath the surface of its stunning history. The author dives deeply into the past, and comes to the surface with stories that he tells in a beautiful way, and that bring readers to the shores of the lake and to see it in all its glory. Tahoe Beneath the Surface enabled me to see a California landmark in a new light and to appreciate it more fully than I ever had before. The history that Lankford tells is inspiring, and the tales of writers who have used Tahoe in their works are profoundly invigorating. This is a book that I will treasure. Anyone who has written this well and with so much charm and humor about Tahoe must love the lake. It’s a lake that deserves to be loved for its singular beauty. I think that if the lake itself could speak it would thank Lankford for his deep reflections on its nature, its history and its place in literature. I urge readers to dive into this book headfirst and to allow its currents to carry them along. Bravo, Lankford, Bravo! This book will take me back to Tahoe and enabled me to see it as though for the first time.”  --Professor Jonah Raskin, Sonoma State University, author of Field Days and American Scream: Allen Ginsberg's Howl and the Making of the Beat Generation.

 

 

Chapter 1 Preview: Cousteau's Corpses

  What scientific mysteries lurk beneath the  waters of Lake Tahoe -- one of the deepest lakes on Earth? 

Strap on your mental scuba gear and join Jacques Cousteau and his 21st Century scientific successors as they plunge beneath the surface of America's Largest Mountain Lake.

 

Chapter 2 Preview: Ice Age Mummies

American history begins here. 

Within 50 air-miles of Tahoe's shores some of the oldest human remains in all of North America were recently unearthed.  This means that more than 9000 years ago humans with complex artistic cultures already roamed the Tahoe region.

 

Chapter 3 Preview: Frémont's Folly

Find out why the birth of the Republican Party is directly linked to the so-called "discovery" of Lake Tahoe in 1844 -- and how Abraham Lincoln's Republican rival, John Frémont, became the first white man ever to set eyes on Tahoe Blue.

 

Chapter 4 Preview: The Burning Woman

 You've  heard of The Burning Man Festival -- an annual neo-tribal gathering of postmodern revelers on the Black Rock playa desert northeast of Tahoe.  But have you ever heard of The Burning Woman?  Of course not.  So read on...

 

Chapter 5 Preview: Donner Party Whodunnit

The Donner Party are justly famous for acts of cannibalism -- but not for cold-blooded murder.  Yet the homicide (and subsequent cannibalism) of the two Indian rescuers who risked their lives to help these starving pioneers has been "hidden in plain sight" from the very beginning. For a CSI episode circa 1846 let's dig deeper...