Book

Spring 2009

White Jade and Other Stories

White Jade book

The seven stories in this collection are delightful. Sometimes funny and even perverse, they show an extravagant imagination, and a very sharp political perspective deepened by their concern for how wars and historical dislocations jam people into corners from which it sometimes takes generations to escape. The novella which follows them, White Jade, has a distinctly different tone and is a marvelous adventure in “autobiography.”It is more like a channeling or act of loving reconstitution of a deceased mother’s voice than anything like a memoir or confession or any of those other … » More …

Spring 2009

Brewing Justice: Fair Trade Coffee, Sustainability, and Survival

About twelve years ago, I drank my first cup of fair trade coffee. I didn’t spend much time thinking about the implications—it just seemed like a decent idea to pay farmers a good price for their product. But even the simple assumption that a fair trade or organic label guarantees farmers a better income or life can be questioned. Do farmers actually receive extra profit? Are they more successful than conventional producers? Do the labels mean anything to them? In Brewing Justice, Washington State University sociologist Daniel Jaffee explores those questions, and other complications … » More …

Winter 2008

Catastrophe to Triumph: Bridges of the Tacoma Narrows

To the relief of many commuters, Tacoma’s new suspension bridge over the Narrows opened in summer 2007, joining the long-serving 1950 span that connects Tacoma to the Kitsap Peninsula. Both Tacoma Narrows bridges, however, are heirs to the dark and twisting legacy of “Galloping Gertie,” the original Narrows bridge that tore itself apart in the wind. Catastrophe to Triumph tells Gertie’s story, and the stories of the ensuing successful bridges, using a wealth of archival photographs, exhaustive engineering details and engaging character studies.

In one of the most compelling sections of his book, historian Richard S. Hobbs captures the drama of the ill-fated 1940 bridge, … » More …

Winter 2008

Conquistador: Hernan Cortés, King Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztecs

I suspect I am a good example of the intended audience for this book, which is a popular account of the strange, tragic relationship between Cortés and Montezuma, and the destruction of a way of life. I can’t remember reading anything about Cortés or Montezuma since high school, other than an occasional National Geographic article. So, I am not the best person to comment on the scholarship. But I can comment on the readability as a popular history, and Levy captured me in the initial pages. He has a way of spinning a good story, of keeping the pages turning, and as the pages turn, … » More …

Winter 2002

Seasoned with Love: Favorite Heart-Healthy Recipes with Reflections about Food, Family, Friends, and Faith

Carolyn Frances Meagher (’56 Speech) conceived a passion for cooking and baking while learning to make cinnamon rolls in a high school cooking class in Pullman, Washington. In time, rich desserts and “anything with cheese” became her trademark among family and friends.

However, the high-fat dinners came to an abrupt end several years ago during a health crisis that triggered an evaluation of her family’s dietary patterns. Meagher began experimenting with her favorite recipes—and looking for new ones—to lower the cholesterol and fat content without losing flavor.

In Seasoned with Love, she presents an eclectic selection of her favorite home-style recipes, all … » More …

Fall 2002

Sewing 911: Practical and Creative Rescues for Sewing Emergencies

Practical is the operative word for this attractive sewing manual by Washington State University alumna Barbara Deckert (’75 English)—from the spiral binding that enables the book to lie flat when open, to the abundance of color photographs illustrating both details and finished garments, to the text’s clarity of organization throughout. In five chapters, Sewing 911 provides solutions to accidental fabric injuries, shortages of fabrics, buttons, and thread, defective design details, fitting flaws, and surface problems such as ironing accidents, spots and show-through, and “finicky fibers and weary weaves.” Four appendices deal with sewing machine problems, emergency supplies, stain removal, and burn testing for fiber … » More …

Winter 2002

The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers

How to describe Robinson Jeffers, now 40 years deceased? Visionary or reactionary? Hard-eyed realist or Romantic throwback? The West’s answer to the East’s Robert Frost? California’s anti-type in poetry and politics to John Steinbeck in fiction and politics?

Jeffers’s raw “inhumanism,” along with his defiance of government meddling, seems the essence of fabled American independence and individualism. In one of his anti-Modernist screeds, “Poetry, Gongorism, and a Thousand Years” (1948), which Tim Hunt, former professor of English at Washington State University at Vancouver, includes among other prose in the Selected Poetry, Jeffers advises young poets that a “posthumous reputation” is “the only kind worth considering.” … » More …

Fall 2003

Rodeo Queens and the American Dream

Whether we meet them in a pasture, at a burger joint, or in a comfortable kitchen, the women in Joan Burbick’s Rodeo Queens and the American Dream take us beyond the dust and glitter of the rodeo that for one season made them royal. Burbick, an American studies professor at Washington State University, began her engrossing study by wondering, Where are the former rodeo queens whose pictures appear annually in local newspapers? How have their lives turned out? Talking with the women yielded much tougher questions.

More than a series of interviews, Rodeo Queens explores rodeo as an American “cultural ritual.” Without losing sight of … » More …

Fall 2002

Real People Don’t Own Monkeys

Ever thought of using an iguana to catch a date? How about using your dog as a private detective or a parrot as a guard dog?

As a veterinarian with about 20 years of experience, Dr. Veronika Kiklevich has seen all that and more. Dr. K., as she insists people call her, is a former clinical instructor at Washington State University’s Veterinary Teaching Hospital, where she practiced clinical medicine and taught veterinary students.

Having witnessed many times over the years that pet owners can be as strange as their animals, herself admittedly included, she decided to write some of her most memorable experiences in her … » More …

Spring 2008

New Poets / Short Books, Volume One

Three collections of poems, by Gwendolyn Cash, Boyd W. Benson, and Lisa Galloway, each numbering something over 20 pages, comprise the first volume of Lost Horse Press’s New Poets / Short Books series under the editorship of renowned poet Marvin Bell, who connects the present undertaking with the Scribner series, Poets of Today, edited by John Hall Wheelock between 1954 and 1962. In his introductory comments Bell indicates that the “3-in-1 series” is “intended to sample a range of poets who have yet to publish a book,” and he adds that “It will not be run as a contest, nor will it accept submissions.” Bell … » More …