This file contains books featured as HistoryLink.org's Book of the Week, from 2000-2003.
October 9, 2003
Family of Strangers
Building a Jewish Community in Washington State
by Molly Cone, Howard Droker, and Jacqueline Williams
University of Washington Press, 2003
416 pages with illustrations, bibliography, notes and index
Hard: $45.00
ISBN 0295982977
This long awaited volume traces the adventures, sacrifices and contributions of Washington state’s Jewish citizens from the arrival of Adolph Friedman more than one and a half century ago through successive waves of immigration and local development to the present day. Family of Strangers serves as both an accessible introduction to one of the state’s most influential social groups and an essential reference to important but often overlooked events, institutions, and personalities in Washington’s cultural and economic evolution.
September 18, 2003
The Cayton Legacy
An African American Family
by Richard S. Hobbs, Ph.D
Washington State University Press, 2002
246 pages with illustrations, endnotes, bibliography, and index
Soft: $21.95
ISBN 0874222516
Richard Hobbs, who took his doctorate in history at the University of Washington, has penned an important chronicle of the Cayton family from its antebellum Mississippi roots to the present day. Horace Cayton Sr. arrived in Seattle soon after the Great Fire of 1889 and married Susie Revels in 1896. With her steadfast support, he pursued a colorful, if mostly unprofitable, career as a pioneering African American publisher and civil rights activist. The tradition was carried on by their five children, notably sons Revels and Horace Jr., in and beyond the Pacific Northwest. Hobbs’ lively, thoroughly researched account of their struggles, sacrifices, and social contributions is both a moving human story and an important addition to local and national African American history.
September 4, 2003
Washington State
(Third Edition)
by Charles P. LeWarne
University of Washington Press, 2003
364 pages with illustrations, bibliography, and index
Hard: $60.00
ISBN 0295982888
Respected historian Chuck LeWarne has updated and expanded his definitive textbook on Washington State history in a new, amply illustrated volume. Beyond providing an essential chronological overview of the state’s development from Ice Age to Information Age, LeWarne offers insightful thematic essays on Washington’s economy, political structure, and growing cultural diversity. While written with K-12 teachers and students in mind, Washington State is a valuable addition to the library of anyone interested in the state of Washington and how it got be that way.
January 23, 2003
More Voices, New Stories
King County, Washington's First 150 Years
Edited by Mary C. Wright
Seattle: Pacific Northwest Historians Guild and the University of Washington Press, 2002
264 pages with photographs, notes, and index
Soft: $17.95
ISBN 0295983108
In celebration of the 2002 sesquicentennial of King County's founding, University of Washington historian Mary Wright and the members of the Pacific Northwest Historians Guild have assembled a diverse anthology of original essays detailing aspects of the region's social and cultural development. There is much new work here, including significant research on the area's Vietnamese, Mexican American, and African American communities, and essays by HistoryLink contributors Charles LeWarne, Eric Flom, Kay Reinartz, and Marianne Forssblad. This little volume presents important scholarship with style and panache, and makes a birthday present fit for a King -- County, that is.
November 21, 2002
Seattle From the Air
Essay by Eric Scigliano
Photographs by Russ Heinl
Portland: Graphic Arts Center Publishing, 2002
112 Pages with photographs
Hard: $29.95
ISBN: 1558686886
Longtime Seattle writer Eric Scigliano has teamed up with photographer Russ Heinl to create a spectacular aerial stereopticon of Seattle as it once was and now appears. Scigliano's affectionate reflections on Seattle's past and present meld perfectly with Heinl's lush color photographs to create a delightful portrait of the city from afar. If aliens on some distant planet are looking down on Seattle with their version of the Hubble Telescope, this is what we'd want them to see.
October 3, 2002
The Last Electric Trolley
Madrona & Denny-Blaine
by Junius Rochester
Seattle: Tommie Press, 2002
166 pages with illustrations, index, and bibliography
$20.00 Soft
ISBN 0-9648950-2-1
Historian Junius Rochester (one of HistoryLink's founding contributors) has just published his latest book, The Last Electric Trolley, an affectionate history of Seattle's Madrona and Denny-Blaine neighborhoods. Rochester weaves the stories of these venerable communities on the western shores of Lake Washington into the larger saga of the city with reflections on his own childhood and long residency in the area. HistoryLink was pleased to join King County in helping to support preparation of this profusely illustrated, 166-page, paperback volume, which is available selected local book stores.
September 16, 2002
The Hill With a Future
Seattle's Capitol Hill 1900-1946
by Jacqueline B. Williams
Seattle: CPK Ink, 2001
198 pages with illustrations, notes and index
Soft: $18.95
ISBN 0-9644173-2-4
Jacqueline B. Williams, popular author of The Way We Ate: Pacific Northwest Cooking 1843-1900 and a scholar of local Jewish community history, turns her attention to her home neighborhood, Seattle's Capitol Hill. Her profusely illustrated account begins with the community's virtual creation by developer James Moore in 1900 and follows its evolution through booms, busts, and two world wars to threshold of the modern era. Williams organizes the story into chapters focusing on specific types of physical and social developments such as homes, parks, churches, and businesses. Told with clear prose and backed by ample research, The Hill With a Future is a "capital idea" for any student of Seattle neighborhoods.
July 2nd, 2002
Hum Bows, Not Hot Dogs!
Memoirs of a Savvy Asian American Activist
by Bob Santos
Seattle: International Examiner Press, 2002
216 pages with photos, index, and bibliography
Soft: $18.00
ISBN 0-9717829-0-3
In this lively and instructive memoir, Filipino American Bob Santos recalls growing up in the International District of 1930s and 1940s and the experiences that transformed him into a determined but practical social activist who led efforts to improve human services, housing, and opportunities for all of the ID's diverse Asian American communities. With wit and candor, he details campaigns to prevent the District from falling into the Kingdome's economic shadow, his collaborations with other social justice movements and leaders, and his own transition from militant outsider to federal insider as regional representative for the director of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
April 4th, 2002
Shaping Seattle Architecture
A Historical Guide to the Architects
Edited by Jeffrey Karl Ochsner
Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994
404 pages with illustrations, notes, and index
Soft: $24.95
ISBN 0-295-97365-8
Published in 1994 to mark the centennial of the Seattle chapter of the American Institute of Architects, Shaping Seattle Architecture established a new standard for local architectural history. University of Washington professor Jeffrey Ochsner assembled a superb team of editors, commentators, and researchers to prepare thoughtful accounts of the careers of 45 leading designers and partnerships who defined Seattle's built environment. The book is an indispensable resource for any student of the city's physical character, and will endure as a landmark in its field for years to come.
March 28th, 2002
Mariners 2001
A Joy Ride for the Record Books
by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Seattle: Seattle P-I, 2001
96 pages with photographs and season statistics
Soft: $16.95
ISBN 0-9624559-8-9
The Seattle P-I celebrates the Mariners' phenomenal 2001 season -- 116 wins and the AL West pennat -- with a lushly illustrated souvenir album. The book profiles star players and describes each month of the season, with an appendix of key stats. It's a keeper.
January 29th, 2002
Iridescent Light
The Emergence of Northwest Art
By Delores Tarzan Ament
Photographs by Mary Randlett
Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002
388 pages with illustrations, notes, chronologies, and index
Cloth: $40.00
ISBN 0-295-98147-4
Former Seattle Times art critic Delores Tarzan Ament details the lives and careers of 21 founding lights of Northwest art in a new collection of lively and insightful essays illuminated by color photographs and selected artist portraits by Mary Randlett, who is deservedly profiled as a major artistic force in her own right. Ament surveys the masters from Tony Angell to Wesley Wehr in this elegant and indispensable volume produced in association with the Museum of Northwest Art in La Conner.
November 29th, 2001
Born in Seattle
The Campaign for Japanese American Redress
By Robert Sadamu Shimabukuro
Seattle: University of Washington Press
158 pages; index; $16.95 soft cover
ISBN 0-295-98142-3
The campaign for redress – for a government apology and financial reparations for the incarceration of 110,000 blameless, patriotic, and hardworking Japanese Americans living on the West Coast during World War II – required courage and the revisiting of painful events. At the conclusion of the internment, many buried the humiliating experience in the past, not even speaking of it to their children. Born in Seattle spells out the large extent to which Japanese Americans from Seattle waged the campaign for national redress and achieved its ultimate victory in the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. This illuminating and graceful book details Seattle’s sordid part – early in the war the City and the Seattle School District fired or forced the resignation of every person of Japanese descent. It also details how the City, the school district, and ultimately the nation made amends for this shameful episode. Most heartwarming is the account of the ceremony held in the International District presenting five persons over 100 years old with an apology and a check for $20,000.
October 3, 2001
Seattle Goes to War
by the Students of Seattle Academy of Arts & Sciences
Seattle: Seattle Academy of Arts & Sciences
168 pages with illustrations and index
$15.00 Soft
No ISBN
Alternately charming and moving, this book bridges generations standing half a century apart and separated by the fading memory of the Second World War. It collects 22 interviews of combat veterans and home front residents conducted by sixth-grade students at the Seattle Academy of Arts & Sciences under the coordination of Constance Sidles. The edited interviews are supplemented with family snapshots and historical photos, and by contextual essays contributed by older Academy students. Seattle Goes to War is available at the University Book Store and other selected booksellers, or may be ordered from the Seattle Academy of Arts & Sciences, 1432 - 15th Street, Seattle, WA 98122; Tel: 206-676-6880.
July 19th, 2001
The Eighth Lively Art
Conversations with Painters, Poets, Musicians & the Wicked Witch of the West
By Wesley Wehr
University of Washington Press
2000
300 pages; Paperback
$17.95
ISBN 0-295-98098-2
These graceful and engaging essays bring to life a Pacific Northwest art scene and the artists who inhabited it and became internationally famous in the process. Wesley Wehr, artist and affiliate curator of Paleobotany at the Burke Museum, was immersed in the art scene in the Pacific Northwest during the 1950s and beyond. Here he recreates conversations, occasions, personalities, and long-time friendships with some 16 artists including Mark Toby, Theodore Roethke, Elizabeth Bishop, and Margaret Hamilton (who who played the Wicked Witch of the West in the original Wizard of Oz). Wehr's Seattle memoir includes scenes from his own Queen Anne High School and from the University of Washington where he majored in music. He is a superb writer and this is an absorbing, delightful read.
May 24th, 2001
Imprisoned Apart
The World War II Correspondence of an Issei Couple
by Louis Fiset
University of Washington Press, 1997
299 pages with illustrations, notes and index
Soft: $19.95
ISBN 0-295-97645-4
HistoryLink contributing editor Louis Fiset captures the poignant drama of Iwao and Hanaye Matsushita as they are swept up and separated amid the post-Pearl Harbor hysteria of the West Coast Japanese American internment. His narrative begins with the young couple's 1919 arrival in Seattle and follows their struggle for a better a life, suddenly interrupted by war and their detention in separate camps. Their correspondence, conducted over two years and heavily censored at the time, bears intimate witness to the cruel absurdity of their confinement and the endurance of love and loyalty against impossible odds.
May 10th, 2001
Made to Last
Historic Preservation in Seattle and King County
by Lawrence Kreisman
Historic Seattle/UW Press, 1999
226 pages with photographs, index, and appendices
Soft $29.95
ISBN 0295978465
Architectural critic and historian Larry Kreisman has updated and expanded his classic 1985 overview of local landmarks and preservation efforts in this handsome new edition. Published on the 25th anniversary of Historic Seattle, a public development corporation that acquires and manages landmark structures, Made to Last offers a concise and extensively illustrated catalogue of all designated historic properties in Seattle and King County as well as a guide to local preservation laws and policies. If you care about saving our region's architectural legacy, you must have this book in your library.
April 19th, 2001
Meet Me At The Center:
The Story of Seattle Center
From the Beginnings To the 1962 World's Fair
To The 21st Century
by Don Duncan
Seattle: Seattle Center Foundation, 1992
144 pages with illustrations, maps, index, and bibliography
Soft: $15.95
ISBN: 0-96-33514-0-0
Century 21 truly was a fair to remember, and journalist Don Duncan gives us a tour of the fairgrounds, not only during the fair, but throughout the many years before, during, and after those magical six months in 1962. From the pioneer days when it was known only as The Prairie, up through its evolution into Seattle's favorite gathering place, Duncan peppers his history of Seattle Center with the kind of anecdotes that only a newspaper reporter can dig up.
April 12th, 2001
Land in the American West
Private Claims and the Common Good
Edited by William G. Robbins and James C. Foster
University of Washington Press: Seattle
222 pages with Index
Soft: $20.00
ISBN: 0-295-98020-6
The struggle for control over Western land has often been violent and tumultuous. There was the original American land struggle, which is in fact continuing, between indigenous peoples and whites. There were the land struggles negotiated by the federal government between large capitol enterprises such as railroads and small-scale farmers and homesteaders. There is the ongoing struggle between property rights, whatever they are, and the common good, whatever it is. Environmentalist, developer, zoning board, county government, owl, logger, fish, Indian tribe, farmer, city dweller, all are players in the brawl over Western land. The 10 essays in Land in the American West edited by William G. Robbins and James C. Foster (and including scholars such as Richard White, Marie Montoya, and Carl Abbot), bring all of this contested terrain into a view of the American West that is both fascinating and troubling.
April 5th, 2001
Leo Kenney
A Retrospective
Notes by Sheila Farr
LaConnor: Museum of Northwest Art with UW Press
100 pages with illustrations, notes and chronology.
Soft: $25.00
ISBN 0-295-97961-5
This luminous catalogue documents a major retrospective exhibition of Leo Kenney's extraordinary canvases held by the Museum of Northwest Art in LaConnor, Wash., in June 2000. Less well known than other "Northwest School" pioneers but no less skilled or powerful a painter, Kenney died on February 26 of this year. Seattle art critic Sheila Farr traces his career with sympathy and insight, and the four-color reproductions of his intricate, often mystical paintings seem to levitate from the page. A must for students of both Northwest art and history.
March 29th, 2001
1001 Curious Things
Ye Olde Curiosity Shop and Native American Art
by Kate C. Duncan
Seattle: UW Press, 2001
273 pages with illustrations, index, bibliography, and notes
Hard: $35.00
ISBN 0-295-98010-9
For over a century, Seattle's Ye Olde Curiosity Shop has diverted and delighted locals and tourists alike with its cabinet of wonders including shrunken heads, desert mummies, and purported mermaids. Arizona State University art professor Kate Duncan has poked her head into the back room and discovered a more serious and significant side of the Shop's role in promoting the collection and preservation of Native American art and artifacts over the past 100 years. Her entertaining but meticulously researched account of Seattle's unofficial "odditorium" is presented in a lush, amply illustrated volume that every Northwest history buff will want to add to his or her own collection.
March 22nd, 2001
Wings of Power,
Boeing and the Politics of Power in the Northwest
by T. M. Sell
Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001
162 pages with index, notes and bibliography
Hard: $24.95
ISBN 0-295-98049-4
In a timely and original addition to Boeing literature, Highline College professor T. M. Sell explores the aerospace giant's uneasy political relations with its home region. While long a mainstay of the Puget Sound economy, Boeing's dealings with state and local governments have often been stormy largely because of the demands on regional infrastructure and public services created by its own success and expansion. This "paradox of growth," Sell's analysis suggests, may have played a role in Boeing's recent decision to shift its corporate headquarters out of the area.
February 8th, 2001
University of Washington
The Campus Guide
by Norman J. Johnston
Photography by Jay Dotson
New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2001
152 pages with illustrations, maps, bibliography, and index
Soft: $24.95
ISBN 1-56898-247-X
Norm Johnston, former Associate Dean of the University of Washington College of Architecture and Urban Planning, has fulfilled a long-held dream with this handy and handsome guide to the architecture of the UW's Seattle campus. His pithy histories of university buildings are nicely complemented with lush color photographs and selected historical views. The Campus Guide is has something for all UW visitors from ancient dons to the youngest freshmen.
January 25th, 2001
The Reverend Mark Mathews
An Activist in the Progressive Era
by Dale E. Soden
Seattle: UW Press, 2001
274 pages with index, illustrations, bibliography and notes
Hard: $30.00
ISBN 0-295-98021-4
Whitworth College history professor Dale Soden captures the life and times the Rev. Mark Matthews (1867-1940) in a lively, economical and scrupulously researched biography. The Georgia-raised pastor was already a towering figure, both intellectually and physically (six foot-five inches) when he moved to Seattle in 1902. He proceeded to build Seattle's First Presbyterian Church into the denomination's largest in the U.S., and challenged his adopted city to aid the poor, denounce greed, defend workers and immigrants, eschew sin, and, foremost, ban alcohol in pursuit of an urban utopia on Elliott Bay. His crusades embody the best -- and the worst -- of early 20th century reform.
December 28th, 2000
Orphan Road
The Railroad Comes to Seattle, 1853-1911
by Kurt E. Armbruster
Pullman: WSU Press, 1999
272 pages with illustrations, notes, and index
Soft $29.95
ISBN 0874221862
It has taken longer for someone to write a comprehensive history of early railroading in Seattle than it did for the city to secure its own transcontinental connection, but Kurt Armbruster has finally closed the gap with a "golden spike" of a book. Lively, authoritative, lushly illustrated, and scrupulously documented, Orphan Road is an absolutely essential text for any student of local history or the Age of Steam.
December 14th, 2000
Building Washington
A History of Washington State Public Works
by Paul Dorpat & Genevieve McCoy
Seattle: Tartu Publications, 1998
422 pages with illustrations and index, plus sponsor pages
Hard: $45.00
ISBN 0-9614357-9-8
In this epic survey of public works, the team of Paul Dorpat and Genevieve McCoy describes the collective transformation of Washington's physical environment with roads, harbors, parks, airports, public facilities, waterways, irrigation systems, utility systems, and myriad other structures. Dorpat brings to this potentially deadly subject his usual wit and insight and keen eye for the telling image, augmented by McCoy's scholarship to produce a deserving winner of last year's Governor's Award for history.
November 30th, 2000
Wobbly War
The Centralia Story
by John McClelland Jr.
Tacoma: Washington State Historical Society, 1987
256 pages with illustrations, index, and notes
Hard: $15.00
ISBN 0-917048-62-8
Of the numerous books on the Industrial Workers of the World, or "Wobblies," this is one of the most balanced and satisfying. John McClelland focuses on the "Centralia Massacre," when American Legion members battled IWW members in the little Western Washington town during the first Armistice Day celebration on November 11, 1919. The clash left four Legionnaires dead, and an enraged mob later lynched a jailed IWW member. McClelland is a Pulitzer Prize-winning publisher and founder of the Washington State Historical Society's Columbia magazine.
November 9th, 2000
The War Years
A Chronicle of Washington State in World War II
by James R. Warren
Seattle: History Ink & UW Press, 2000
304 pages with illustrations, bibliography, appendices, and index
Soft: $19.95
ISBN 0-295-98076-1
This illustrated volume offers a monthly diary of "the big one" as it affected our state, including home front activities, military production, and the sacrifices of Washingtonians in combat around the world. The book also contains a complete roster of Washington citizens who gave their lives during the war and descriptions of the acts of valor that earned state residents the Medal of Honor. Jim Warren is a former director of the Museum of History & Industry and, with the aid of his wife Gwen, author of numerous books on local history. He is also a veteran of WWII who was captured by the Germans during the 1944 "Battle of the Bulge."
November 3rd, 2000
A Richer Harvest:
the Literature of Work in the Pacific Northwest
Edited by Graig Wollner and W. Tracy Dillon
Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 1999
273 pages;
$19.95 paper; illustrated
ISBN 0-87071-465-1
This reader on the literature of working-class life in the Pacific Northwest gathers the stories, memoirs, poems, and songs of 43 writers from Joe Hill ("You'll get pie in the sky when you die") to "Anise," the pen Seattle firebrand Anna Louise Strong used when she was in literary mode. It also includes current writers such as Ken Kesey, Sherman Alexie, Ursula Le Guin, Gary Snyder, and Tess Gallagher. Who would have thought that writing about construction jobs, cannery jobs, logging jobs, coal mining jobs, not to mention being out of a job could be so entertaining?
October 26th, 2000
Ghost Stories of Washington
by Barbara Smith
Edmonton, Alberta: Lone Pine Publishing, 2000
232 pages with illustrations and bibliography
$10.95 Soft
ISBN 1-55105-260-1
Modern-day ghost hunter Barbara Smith has tracked down a menagerie of phantoms, shades, spooks, hauntings, and other paranormal phenomena in Washington state, and in Seattle in particular. She notes that "retrocognition (also known as postcognition), which is described as seeing or sensing the past, is a particularly fascinating type of ghostly encounter." Sure sends shivers down our spines here at HistoryLink.
October 12th, 2000
War & Politics By Other Means
A Journalist's Memoir
by Shelby Scates
Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000
216 pages with photographs and index
Hard: $24.95
ISBN 0-295-98009-5
Shelby Scates is the undisputed dean of political reporters in the Pacific Northwest. In this engaging memoir, he recounts some of his 35 years on the frontlines of wars, campaigns, and scandals from the Near East to the Far West. As a longtime reporter and columnist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Scates broke numerous important stories which earned him the hatred of, among others, corrupt police officers and former Governor Dixy Lee Ray. Scates is proud of his high standing on many "enemies lists," including the piglet Gov. Ray named for him and then ate. Now semi-retired, Scates wrote the authorized biography of Sen. Warren G. Magnuson (UW Press, 1996), and continues to ply his trade as a freelance writer.
September 28th, 2000
Peoples of Washington:
Perspectives on Cultural Diversity
Edited by Sid White and S. E. Solberg
Pullman, WA: Washington State University Press, 1989
261 pages; numerous photographs; bibliography; index
ISBN 0-87422-062-9
This collection of essays on Washington's diverse communities is a perfect introduction to our multiculturally rich Pacific Northwest heritage. The six essays on Native American, European American, African American, Asian/Pacific American, and Hispano American communities emphasize the diversity within these communities as well as the dramatic cultural variations among them. Peoples of Washington also makes note of groups not given full essays, such as recent arrivals from Africa, and the many Arabic speaking people who began to settle here in the 1940s. Many of these groups underwent the attempted erasure of their languages and cultures through an assimilationist "melting pot" ideology. This volume is part of the new movement to instead preserve and celebrate. Its maps, photographs, bibliographies, and illuminating reflections make it a treasure.
September 14th, 2000
Jet Dreams:
Art of the Fifties in the Northwest
Edited by Barbara Johns
Tacoma: Tacoma Art Museum in Association with University of Washington Press, 1995
119 pages; profusely illustrated;
paper; $19.95
ISBN 0-295-97441-9
Jet Dreams, a well-illustrated primer of canonical Pacific Northwest artists such as Mark Tobey, Kenneth Callahan, Morris Graves, and George Tsutakawa, includes artists harder to catagorize but no less important such as painters Margaret Tomkins and James Washington Jr., art weaver Hella Skowronski, and metalsmith Ruth Pennington. Essays on Pacific Northwest art, architecture, crafts, and imagery are tied together with yearly timelines displayed in balloons from beginning to end. This handy and intelligent book is as good on the fifties — the age of atomic anxiety, split level homes, tail fins, Elvis, and Sputnik — as it is on art. Editor Barbara Johns was the brilliant curator of the Tacoma Art Museum.
September 7th, 2000
Messages From Frank's Landing
A Story of Salmon, Treaties, and the Indian Way
By Charles Wilkinson
Photo Essay by Hank Adams
Seattle & London: University of Washington Press, 2000
118 pages; 52 Photos; 3 Maps;
cloth; $22.50
ISBN 0-295-98011-7
Legal scholar Wilkinson's riveting history of the Nisqually people reads like a novel while elucidating the legal niceties of Indian fishing rights beginning before the Medicine Creek Treaty of 1854 and continuing through the historic Boldt case of 1974 to the present time. Part biography of the visionary tribal leader Billy Frank Jr., part vivid biography of a river and its salmon, part history of the dramatic fish-ins of the 1960s, the book begins by retelling the story of Chief Leschi and the Indian wars from an Indian point of view, and includes a chapter on the federal condemning of Nisqually land to establish Fort Lewis. Handsomely designed and lavishly illustrated, this book will undoubtedly take its place among those considered essential for understanding our long and often conflicted history.
August 17th, 2000
Good Schools
The Seattle Public School System, 1901-1930
by Bryce Nelson
Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988
188 pages with illustrations, bibliography and index
Hard: $20.00
ISBN: 0-295-96668-8
This is a must-have book for both students of local history and anyone who cares about education in Seattle. Nelson, himself a long-time Seattle educator, paints a definitive and lively portrait of the extraordinarily progressive era of Seattle public education in the first three decades of the twentieth century. Much of the credit for local advances goes to Frank Cooper, superintendent from 1900 to 1922, but then as now, "it takes a village" to educate children and youth.
August 10th, 2000
A Different Battle:
Stories of Asian Pacific American Veterans
Edited by Carina A. del Rosario Photographs by Dean Wong
Wing Luke Asian Museum & University of Washington Press, 1999
128 pages with photographs, notes and index
Soft: $18.95
ISBN 0295979194
This handsome portfolio showcases images and stories of Asian Pacific Americans who served their nation in three wars, often facing enemies who looked like themselves and hostility and suspicion from their own comrades. Based on the 1999 Wing Luke Asian Museum exposition "A Different Battle," the book describes the experiences of men and women for whom every war had to be fought on two fronts.
August 3rd, 2000
Indians in the Making
Ethnic Relations and Indian Identities Around Puget Sound
By Alexandra Harmon
University of California Press, 1998
393 pages, Illustrations, Notes, Index
Paper, $19.95
ISBN 0-520-22685-2
Indians in the Making recieved the Governor's Writer's Award for good reason. Alexandra Harmon's richly nuanced account of the interactions among Northwest Indians and between Indians and whites casts new light on the entire sweep of Northwest history. The chronology is the familiar one: Indian- fur trapper relations, Indian-settler relations, the treaties and Indian wars, and the evolving relationship between Indians and the United States. Harmon re-envisions familiar territory in her subtle and complex depiction of Indian outlooks and identities. Final chapters illuminate tribal organizations both new and old, and treaty fishing rights as an emblem of Indian identity.
July 20th, 2000
A Hidden Past:
An Exploration of Eastside History
by The Seattle Times East Side Bureau
The Seattle Times Company, 2000
104 pages with illustrations
Paperback $5.95
ISBN: 0-9444912-07-9
This compilation of articles that ran in The Seattle Times from December 1997 to January 2000 contains a wealth of interesting stories about communties such as Duvall, Carnation, Redmond, Kirkland, Bellevue, and Black Diamond, among many others. Enjoy tantalizing tales of pig races in Lake Washington. Discover the locations of long-since vanished villages, farms, resorts, and airports. Take a nostalgic ride up the Sammamish on a speed boat, or just stroll through each story at a leisurely pace. You won't be disappointed.
July 13th, 2000
The Search for the Green River Killer
by Carlton Smith & Tomas Guillen,
Onyx Books, 1991
479 pages with epilogue and illustrations
Paperback $7.99
ISBN: 0-451-40239-1
Smith and Guillen's account of the investigation surrounding the Green River Killer has captivated readers since its first publication in 1991. The sensational story, the search for a serial killer still at large, gripped local citizens from in the mid-1980s as a bewildering stream of victims were found strangled and disposed, mostly near Green River in southern King County. The story addresses the detectives' frustrated struggles to find the killer, and their education in the lives of his 49 victims, mostly prostitutes.
July 6th, 2000
The Price of Taming a River:
The Decline of Puget Sound's Duwamish/Green Waterway
by Mike Sato
The Mountaineers, 1997
107 pages, illustrated with bibliography
Paperback $12.95
ISBN: 0898864909
Mike Sato's history of the Green River Watershed chronicles the river's story, starting well before white settlers began developing its banks in the late 19th century. The river, long occupied by American Indians, fish, shellfish and wildlife, was then dredged, rechanneled, dammed and diked to control water flow to farm lands and industry. Pollution and destruction of natural habitats resulted. The river has since become the focus of political and economic battles and its plight has catalyzed community action. Sato's work is an exemplary piece of environmental history as it seamlessly weaves the politics of natural and cultural preservation.
June 29th, 2000
Skid Road:
An Informal Portrait of Seattle
by Murray Morgan
University of Washington Press
288 pages, revised edition (February 1982)
Paperback $16.95
ISBN: 0295958464
Murray Morgan wrote Skid Road in 1951, one hundred years after Seattle's founding. Today, almost fifty years later, Morgan's "Informal Portrait" is still revered as a great work of popular history. This entertaining and accessable story of Seattle's underbelly details the personalities and incidents that came together to shape the city and it's popular identity.
June 22nd, 2000
My Son Jimi
by Al Hendrix, Jas Obrecht editor
IAJas Enterprises, LP, 1999
190 pages, 1st Edition
Paperback 29.95
ISBN: 0966785703
This rich personal account of Jimi Hendrix's life is more than a standard rock biography. Al Hendrix, Jimi's father, places the rock star's story in perspective by describing the family's experiences with racism and economic hardship in the Pacific Northwest. Hendrix's story reflects the lives of many African Americans making their way in Seattle's post war "boom times."
June 15th, 2000
On the Take:
From Petty Crooks to Presidents
by William J. Chambliss
Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1988 301 pages
2nd edition with appendixes
Paperback 14.95
ISBN 0253202981
William J. Chambliss left his comfortable life as a sociology professor at the University of Washington in the 1960s to examine life in Seattle's margins. He dons scruffy clothes and gains the trust of downtowners to see Seattle's underworld from "the inside." In so doing, Chambliss shapes a view of politics and crime in Seattle that combines academic sociology with journalism and creative writing. His account describes the underbelly of Seattle in the 1960s as it is reflected in the daily life of its bars and restaurants and "beat cops."
June 8th, 2000
The Fountain & the Mountain
The University of Washington Campus, 1895-1995
by Norman J. Johnston
Seattle: Documentary Book Publishers/University of Washington Press, 1995
174 pages with illustrations and index
Hard: $24.98 Special
ISBN 0935503153
Norm Johnston, former University of Washington Associate Dean of Architecture and Urban Planning, has written a compact but informative history of the development of the UW Campus during its first century. This oversized volume is lushly illustrated with historic photographs and drawings, contrasted with color images from the mid-1990s. A perfect memento for graduates or their proud relatives.
June 1st, 2000
Pacific Schooner Wawona
By Harriet Tracy DeLong
Bellevue: Documentary Books, 1985
158 pages with illustrations, bibliography, and index
Soft: O.P., Prices vary
ISBN 0935503021
Harriet Tracy DeLong traces the history of the largest three-masted schooner ever built in North America and also recounts much of Puget Sound's rich maritime lore along the way. The proud Wawona was launched in 1897 in California and pursued a long career hauling lumber and fish in Pacific Northwest waters. She was rescued from destruction in the 1970s by the patrons and volunteers of NW Seaport, and is currently undergoing restoration at the south end of Lake Union. This oversized, illustrated history is currently out of print but can be found at the NW Seaport store and used bookstores.
May 18th, 2000
Historical Atlas of the Pacific Northwest
Maps of Exploration and Discovery
Compiled and Annotated by Derek Hayes
Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 1999
208 pages with illustrations, notes and index
Hard: $31.50
ISBN 1570612153
Derek Hayes, a map collector and scholar based in Vancouver, B.C., and Sasquatch Books have created a masterpiece literally charting the Euro-American exploration of our region from the late 1700s through the early 1900s. A superb selection of exquisite maps, many in color, is complemented with insightful captions and notes. This Atlas is essential for anyone seeking to navigate Pacific Northwest history.
May 11th, 2000
University Book Store
A Centennial Pictorial
by Paul Dorpat
Seattle: University Book Store, 2000
118 pages with illustrations and index
Soft: $10.00
ISBN 0935331115
HistoryLink co-founder Paul Dorpat traces the history of one of the region's largest independent booksellers from its birth as a tiny student co-op in 1900 to the present day. The store's development mirrors that of the growing campus and city it served, which Dorpat illustrates with a rich palette of historic photographs, cartoons, and ephemera. Today, in addition to its headquarters on University Way, the Book Store operates branches on the UW's Seattle and Tacoma campus, in downtown Seattle, and in Bellevue.
May 4th, 2000
Hubbard
The Forgotten Boeing Aviator
by Jim Brown
Seattle: Peanut Butter Pub., 1996
230 pages with illustrations, bibliography and index
Soft: $19.95
ISBN 0897166515
Canadian writer Jim Brown stumbled across the "forgotten" exploits of Eddie Hubbard while researching the history of airmail in North America. He presents a lively and well-documented biography of this aviation pioneer who served as one of William Boeing's first test pilots. In the doldrums following World War I, Hubbard saw airmail as the means to revive Boeing's fortunes. He accompanied Bill Boeing on a round-trip from Lake Union to Victoria to deliver the nation's first airmail in 1919, established regular US-Canada service the next year, and in 1927, persuaded Boeing to bid on the U.S. Post Office contract to fly the mails between Chicago and San Francisco. This planted the seed for United Air Lines and Boeing's future dominance of passenger aircraft design, but Hubbard didn't live to see it. He died suddenly in 1928 while planning a Boeing airfield in Reno, Nevada.
April 27th, 2000
A History of the Catholic Church in the Pacific Northwest
1743-1983
by the Rev. Wilfred P. Schoenberg, SJ Washington, D.C.: The Pastoral Press, 1987
883 pages with illustrations, index and notes
Hard: $34.95
This extraordinary triumph of both historical scholarship is still available! Fr. Schoenberg, SJ, broadens the focus of his earlier masterpiece history of Northwest Jesuits, Paths to the Northwest, to record the dramatic sweep of Catholic missionary work and settlement in our corner of the world. He begins with the astounding 1831 arrival in St. Louis of four famished Montana Flathead Indians seeking "black robes" (Jesuits). Fr. Peter DeSmet, SJ, responded by leading a historic expedition into the far Northwest, quickly followed with jealous zeal by Protestant missionaries. And so began the Christian Era in our region, chronicled here with knowing wit and sympathy for all by the good Fr. Schoenberg.
April 20th, 2000
Meet Me At The Center:
The Story of Seattle Center
From the Beginnings To the 1962 World's Fair
To The 21st Century
by Don Duncan
Seattle: Seattle Center Foundation, 1992
144 pages with illustrations, maps, index, and bibliography
Soft: $15.95
ISBN: 0-96-33514-0-0
Century 21 truly was a fair to remember, and journalist Don Duncan gives us a tour of the fairgrounds, not only during the fair, but throughout the many years before, during, and after those magical six months in 1962. From the pioneer days when it was known only as The Prairie, up through its evolution into Seattle's favorite gathering place, Duncan peppers his history of Seattle Center with the kind of anecdotes that only a newspaper reporter can dig up.
April 13th, 2000
Exploring Washington's Past:
A Road Guide to History
Revised Edition
by Ruth Kirk and Carmela Alexander
Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995
543 pages with illustrations, maps, index, and bibliography
Soft: $27.95
ISBN: 0-295-97443-5
With blue skies and clear highways comes the yearly itch to ditch work and take a road trip. Washington offers countless points of interest, and very different landscapes -- its rainforests, desert-like plain, mountains and cities lie only hours apart. What better way to travel, than with your very own historical guide. Historian Ruth Kirk and writer Carmela Alexander first produced Exploring Washington's Past in 1990. This extremely useful and entertaining work has been updated, and includes contemporary street maps and historic photographs.
April 6th, 2000
Encyclopedia of Northwest Music:
From Classical Recordings to Classic Rock Performances, Your Guide to the Best of the Region
by James Bush
Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 1999
340 pages with illustrations and index
Soft: $21.95
ISBN: 1-57061-141-6
The Northwest music scene is more than Grunge, Jackson Street jazz, or Jimi Hendrix. Seattle-based musician and journalist James Bush describes the region's rich and diverse music history in this compendium spanning the past 50 years. Bush profiles more than 200 artists, bands, groups, and movements in this encyclopedic, yet critical and personal overview. Bass guitarist Bush has been writing about Northwest music since the 1980s, publishing articles in The Rocket, Hype, and Seattle Weekly among others.
March 30th, 2000
Sexless Oysters and Self-Tipping Hats:
100 Years of Invention in the Pacific Northwest
by Adam Woog
Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 1991
256 pages with illustrations and index Soft: $14.95
ISBN 0-912365-47-1
The Northwest was the mother of many great inventions, products of local climate and geography. As Adam Woog states in his preface, "a spirit of inimitable Northwestiness is found in these pages." His trove of Northwest inventions reads like a what's what of everyday life. The well-known Seattle journalist and reviewer details the story of fiberglass skis, plywood, chainsaws, down parkas, and dozens of other ubiquitous goods conceived here in the Pacific Northwest. Filling out the ranks are a number of not-so-ordinary items that never caught on, like the hosable "self cleaning house." Both amusing and informative, Woog pays great attention to the stories behind the things we take for granted.
March 16th, 2000
Riddle of the Bones
Politics, Science, Race and the Story of the Kennewick Man
by Roger Downey
New York: Copernicus, 2000
202 page with notes and index
Hard: $20.00
ISBN 0387988777
The chance discovery of the skeletal remains of the "Kennewick Man" on the banks of the Columbia River in 1996 is the opening scene in a mystery that reaches back nine millennia to North America's first human inhabitants. It has also sparked a seminal clash between the values of Euro-American scientific inquiry and Native American cultural identity. Veteran journalist Roger Downey (who is better known to Seattle Weekly readers for his incisive arts reviews than for his equally sharp science reporting) assembles the pieces and weighs the evidence in a crisp, witty narrative cognizant of the fact that some would prefer to send the Kennewick Man -- and his secret -- back to the grave.
March 9th, 2000
Bertha Knight Landes
Big City Mayor
by Sandra Haarsager
Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994
334 Pages with illustrations, notes and index
Hard: $32.95
ISBN 0806125926
March 8 is now honored as International Women's Day, but back in 1926 Bertha K. Knight made history the next day by winning election in Seattle as the first woman to lead a major American city. Although she served only one two-year term, Landes' achievement encouraged women around the nation to intensify their political involvement and to aspire to elective office. Sanda Haarsberger describes both Landes' personal political evolution (as a young woman, she opposed suffragism) and the larger context of reforms largely fueled by women mobilized in the interconnected "club movement," temperance groups, right-to-vote campaigns, and progressive politics. Landes and her contemporaries argued that the community "was but the larger home," and that women had every right to clean house in city hall as they did in their own domiciles. In the process, they remodelled American politics from the foundation up.
March 2nd, 2000
Woman's Place
A Guide to Seattle and King County History
by Mildred Tanner Andrews
Seattle: Gemil Press, 1994
330 pages with illustrations, maps & index
Soft: $14.95
ISBN 0964023903
HistoryLink contributing editor Mildred Andrews provides a detailed and illuminating guide to how women, so often forgotten in local history, helped to shape the development and culture of Seattle and King County. Extensively illustrated with photographs and maps, Woman's Place guides visitors and students to physical locations and landmarks that resonate with the voices of female pioneers, reformers, and community leaders. This is a superb introduction to a significant but still neglected dimension of local history.
February 24th, 2000
Jackson Street After Hours
The Roots of Jazz in Seattle
by Paul de Barros
New photographs by Eduardo Calderon
Seattle: Sasquatch Press, 1993
238 pages with illustrations, notes & index
Soft: $22.95
ISBN 0912365927
Journalist and music critic Paul de Barros traces the roots of Seattle's jazz, blues, and early rock scene with compelling essays and a comprehensive collection of historical photographs, complemented with new portraits of leading artists by Eduardo Calderon. In the process, de Barros offers fresh insights on what it was like for African Americans to live, work, and make music in Seattle. Boogie, bop, swing and sway with greats such as Ray Charles, Ernestine Anderson, Quincy Jones and a young prodigy named Jimi Hendrix, when Jackson Street was the center of Seattle's musical universe.
February 17th, 2000
Calabash
A Guide to the History, Culture & Art of African Americans in Seattle and King County, Washington
by Esther Hall Mumford
Seattle: Ananse Press, 1993
158 pages with illustrations & bibliography
Soft: $9.95
ISBN 0960567070
Seattle historian Esther Mumford offers a comprehensive and lively tour of sites and buildings reflecting the lives and contributions of King County's African American community. Along the way, she tells the histories of some of our region's leading African American artists, politicians, entrepreneurs, ministers, and and social reformers.
February 10th, 2000
In Search of the Racial Frontier
African Americans in the American West, 1528-1990
by Quintard Taylor
New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1998
415 pages with index, notes & illustrations
Soft: $15.95
ISBN 0393318893
With this sweeping, graceful and incisive overview of the African American experience in the "Old West," Quintard Taylor establishes himself as one of the leading scholars and synthesists of both the "New West" and modern African American history. Taylor builds on a growing body of important and original research to portray a fresh, often startling view of the multiple roles of African Americans -- explorers, settlers, capitalists, soldiers, slaves and community-builders -- in shaping the complex social and economic fabric of the West. There is no better book to read for Black History Month, or any other month for that matter.
February 3rd, 2000
The Forging of a Black Community
A History of Seattle's Central District, 1870 through the Civil Rights Era
by Quintard Taylor
Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994
330 pages with illustrations, index, and bibliography
Hard $16.95
ISBN 0293973455
Prof. Quintard Taylor, former head of the History Department at the University of Oregon, offers a compelling history of Seattle's Central District from the post-Civil War era through the Civil Rights movement of a century later. Now at the University of Washington, Prof. Taylor writes with force and grace in describing how a tiny minority defined its own community amid a sometimes hostile majority, and gradually claimed its rightful political and economic place in modern Seattle.
January 27th, 2000
Cigarette Wars
The Triumph of "The Little White Slaver"
by Cassandra Tate
New York: Oxford University Press, 1999
204 pages with illustrations, notes & index Hard: $29.95
ISBN 0195118510
The modern crusade against smoking has roots extending back to the public health and progressive movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While not limited to the Pacific Northwest, Cassandra Tate's entertaining and insightful history of these early efforts to ban smoking features Washington state's pioneering efforts to prohibit cigarettes (but not other forms of tobacco). A Seattle-based historian, Tate describes the victories -- and ultimate defeat -- of early anti-smoking reformers with wit and a knowing eye for the traps facing purists who enter the political jungle.
January 20th, 2000
Long Day's Journey
The Steamboat & Stagecoach Era in the Northern West
by Carlos A. Schwantes
408 pages with illustrations, notes, bibilography & index
Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999
Hard: Special $44.96
ISBN 0295976918
Distinguished Northwest historian Carlos Schwantes builds on the triumph of his Railroad Signatures Across the Pacific Northwest (UW Press, 1993) with this rich overview of waterborne and overland transportation in the Northern Tier states west of the Missouri River. Schwantes' always l
