Book

Spring 2002

Essentials of the American Constitution

Essentials of the American Constitution examines five closely integrated components that make up the fundamental law: the compact, separation of powers, federalism, representation, and the Bill of Rights. The interaction among these components gives the constitution its dynamism. Landmark decisions handed down by the Supreme Court involve two or more of them.

The book’s unique approach shows how these components often work together, assisting, explaining, or reinforcing one another. Author Charles H. Sheldon provides an overview of the fundamental principles of the American Constitution and gives a firm foundation for readers interested in American government and politics, constitutional law, or civil liberties.

A member of … » More …

Spring 2008

Disturbance-Loving Species

Much has been made of the supposed decline of short fiction in recent years. But Peter Chilson’s intelligent, gripping, and emotionally complex new book, Disturbance-Loving Species, winner of the prestigious Katharine Bakeless Nason Prize for fiction, defies that doomsday thinking.The one novella and four short stories that make up this collection throb with the life of Africa, from a market “like a great pond-based ecosystem, billowing with hierarchies of species and teeming with predators and parasites, opportunists and victims” to a taxi ride in which “the driver sped across a crowded city, slowing for no person, no camel or donkey, no pothole . . . … » More …

Summer 2004

Competing Devotions: Career and Family Among Women Executives

To be or not to be a devoted mother, corporate executive—or both? These are the choices and challenges facing career women more than ever. In Competing Devotions: Career and Family Among Women Executives, former Washington State University sociology professor Mary Blair-Loy examines the lifestyles of two groups of women and the decisions they made regarding the delicate balance of raising children along with—or versus—the long hours they spend behind an executive’s desk.

The first group, made up of 56 predominantly white female finance executives, was called the career-committed group. The second group, the family-committed group, was made up of 25 white women who left full-time, … » More …

Winter 2004

Chicana Leadership: The Frontiers Reader

This collection of inspired and thoughtful articles, originally published in Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies from 1980 to 1999, examines not only Chicana leadership, but also Chicana activism, history, and identity. According to the primary editor, Yolanda Flores Niemann, chair, Department of Comparative Ethnic Studies at Washington State University, Chicanas are virtually invisible to U.S. society and oftentimes even to their own communities. Nevertheless, from leading boycotts, challenging injustice, and shaping the creative and performing arts to carving out sexual, cultural, political, and national identities in public and not-so-public ways, Chicanas are ubiquitous.

The problem is that we do not see Chicanas’ work, their … » More …

Spring 2006

A Genetic and Cultural Odyssey: The Life and Work of L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza

Anthropology embraces four disparate subfields: archaeology, physical anthropology, linguistics, and cultural anthropology. Few people today are able to make significant contributions to more than one of these. This book celebrates a career marked by signal contributions to all four, and to genetics as well. Born Luigi Cavalli in Genoa in 1922 and, following his father’s death, formally adopted at age 27 by his maternal stepgrandfather, Count Sforza, Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza (hereafter, Cavalli) has come to be a leading figure in anthropological genetics—a field which he in fact has helped define. His accomplishments have been recognized by election to the National Academy of Sciences (U.S.) and … » More …

Winter 2001

Beyond Outcomes

For the first time in the 126-year history of college-level writing programs, a single scholarly book focuses on one university’s writing program.

Beyond Outcomes: Assessment and Instruction Within a University Writing Program tells the story of Washington State University’s Campus Writing Programs. Beyond Outcomes fully describes a set of innovations that have become models for the nation: the University Writing Portfolio, a system of peer-led group writing tutorials at the freshman and the junior levels, and an “expert rating system” that Brian Huot, co-editor of the journal Assessing Writing and a leading expert on writing assessment, has called one of the most promising developments in … » More …

Summer 2003

Anaconda: Labor, Community and Culture in Montana’s Smelter City

Anaconda, in southwest Montana, was home to the world’s largest copper smelter. Marcus Daly established the first smelter in 1884. In 1980, the last plant closed its doors. Anaconda deals primarily with the community from the 1930s through the 1970s, and focuses on social life, work, unions, and the role of women in an industrialized western town.

An associate professor of history at Washington State University at Vancouver, Laurie Mercier undertook much of the research for Anaconda while she served as state oral historian for Montana.

The strength of Mercier’s work is her attention to women. She doesn’t ignore the male story, but she continually … » More …

Spring 2007

With Amusement for All: A History of American Popular Culture since 1830

For many years, the study of popular culture, like comedian Rodney Dangerfield, “got no respect.” Only with the vast amount of excellent, sophisticated research in the last three decades has the culture preferred by millions of Americans become serious history. LeRoy Ashby’s With Amusement for All: A History of American Popular Culture Since 1830 is the first book to synthesize hundreds of recent studies of specific aspects of popular culture into a single, sweeping story. Both in time frame—from the 1830s, when innovations in communication and transportation first made a truly mass, national culture possible, to the present era of proliferating new media—and in scope—including … » More …

Spring 2004

All Abraham's Children: Changing Conceptions of Race and Lineage

This thoroughly documented study of race and identity within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints unravels various ways Mormons have constructed and negotiated their identity throughout history. Armand Mauss, professor emeritus of sociology at Washington State University, makes the intriguing argument that Mormonism provides a unique case in which religious prejudice or particularism actually undermines secular prejudice. While Mormon relations with other races have not been without difficulty, documentation provided here demonstrates that in specific cases, Mormons hold less prejudicial attitudes than other white Americans.

This is due, according to Mauss, to a theology linking Mormon lineage with other ethnic groups. Believing Native … » More …

Spring 2002

Two Worlds

As a longtime teacher of multicultural children, Marietta Taylor Barron (’45 Home Econ.) observed the struggles of Mexican-Americans to overcome poverty and prejudice. She was determined to tell their story simply and visually for all youngsters to understand.

Two Worlds is the account of a pre-teen Mexican-American boy who challenged the system of school segregation in the California mining town where he and his family lived. The story is based on Barron’s own recollections. The author brings out the dramatic contrasts between the Latino barrio and the white section of town from a young person’s viewpoint.

A young Mexican boy decides, without any legal authority, … » More …