Book

Fall 2005

The Work of Wolves

Reading Kent Meyers’s The Work of Wolves reminded me of a time when I loved horses. To watch them gallop, to see them stoop and eat grass, to feel their breath as they’d nuzzle my hand for oats. To sense in them an innate sovereignty that people in our century seem sometimes to have abandoned.

Which is why this story of South Dakota’s iron landscape, compassion battling possessive hatred, and the plight of three horses, appeals so.

Stoic rancher’s son Carson Fielding takes a job he doesn’t want teaching an obsessively arrogant man’s wife to ride. Over the course of her training they fall into … » More …

Winter 2007

Wisdom and Eloquence: A Christian Paradigm for Classical Learning

If you’re a parent seeking a quality model for secondary education for your child, you will be intrigued and encouraged in reading Robert Littlejohn ’83 and Charles T. Evans’s Wisdom and Eloquence: A Christian Paradigm for Classical Learning. If you’re a Washington State University grad, you’ll want to see what a Cougar Ph.D. in botany-plant physiology (Littlejohn) contributes to the educational arena, specifically in providing a Christian paradigm for classical learning. What makes this book valuable is the credibility it brings to a field often littered with well-meaning attempts at Christian education that lack either the faith dimension or the balanced educational dimension. Littlejohn brings … » More …

Winter 2005

Windfalls

To be a mother or an artist? Or both?

Anyone interested in women’s quest stories that explore these central questions will find Jean Hegland’s second novel, Windfalls, to be essential reading. Readers who know the Palouse will enjoy her vivid descriptions of Spokane and eastern Washington. Indeed the entire book seems to cast a golden-red glow on the lives of its struggling main characters, Cerise and Anna, like the “last ruddy light. . . , burnishing the fields and illuminating the roses, deepening the crimson” in a Palouse sunset.

Hegland (B.A. ’79) earns a solid place for Windfalls in the tradition of women’s quest novels … » More …

Winter 2001

The War Years: A Chronicle of Washington State in World War II

Most Washingtonians don’t realize that their state—with a wartime population of just over 1.7 million—did as much or more per capita than any other state to help win World War II, says James R. Warren.

The WSU alumnus (’49 Speech/Comm.) and Bellevue resident is author of a new book, The War Years: A Chronicle of Washington State in World War II.

The state’s 15 shipyards were busy building warships. Boeing turned out thousands of B-17 and B-29 bombers. Pacific Car and Foundry produced hundreds of Sherman tanks. And Hanford purified the plutonium for the atomic bombs dropped on Japan by B-17s. When the war started … » More …

Winter 2003

Unique Monique: Moki Time

Young readers of Unique Monique: Moki Time, by Corinne Tyler Isaak ’92, Karen A. Cooper, and illustrator Don Nutt will scarcely notice that they’re learning to tell time and acquire new words, as they follow five-year-old Monique—or Moki—through her day on the family farm.

From the moment she rises at 7 a.m. until bedtime 12 hours later, Moki revels in the simplest and most immediate of pleasures. A mock talent show. A picnic on the lawn. Flying “Mama’s” kite. Daydreaming in the hayloft. Playing dress-up. The role of imagination is important here—and it’s handled so deftly that adults will scarcely notice how deeply rooted this … » More …

Winter 2003

I Only Smoke on Thursdays

What would Audrey Hepburn do? Look no further than the timeless class, spirit, and wit of the late actress for tips on dating and living as a modern woman. That’s part of the advice of Seattle author Georgie Nickell (’94 Comm.) in her debut novel, I Only Smoke on Thursdays.

Nickell chronicles the Valentine’s Day dumping of her heroine by The One—she annoyingly capitalizes His every reference—and the three years that follow of dating, smoking, going to bars with names like the “Fruit Fly” and “Cha-Cha Hut,” and drinking vodka tonics with extra lime. Smoke on Thursdays is the how-to manual of a single Seattle twenty-something … » More …

Summer 2003

Index of Suspicion

Don’t read Index of Suspicion by Robert E. Armstrong until all your pets have had fresh rabies vaccinations. Using his knowledge as a veterinarian—he graduated from WSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine in 1962—Armstrong has constructed a complex and frightening plot that hinges on the deliberate infection of people with the rabies virus as an instrument of murder.

Set in Texas, where Armstrong now lives, this fast-paced whodunnit stars an aging veterinarian who becomes caught up in the rabies plot. Armed with his technical knowledge and plenty of courage, the vet investigates the death of a presidential candidate and a grand old dame of the Texas … » More …

Winter 2002

Down Along the Sunset

In this slender volume of 29 poems Benner Cummings (’51 Speech & Hearing Sci.) pays homage to the romance of surfing. Based upon Cummings’s years as surfing and swimming coach at San Clemente High School, the poems celebrate the beauty, grace, daring, and freedom inherent in the pursuit of surfing—often in terms that equate surfers with mythological figures:

Like the playful sea god Triton,He arose from out of the sea.

While these verses might lack the polish of a Robinson Jeffers, they nevertheless ring with the authority of Cummings’s deeply felt response to the magic of riding the waves. Perhaps no other lines exemplify that … » More …

Fall 2002

Staying Tuned: A Life in Journalism

In the beginning, radio was his second choice. After a journalistic teething in the service of the ANETA news agency in the Netherlands, Daniel Schorr wanted to be a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. When he fell victim to the Jewish-owned paper’s self-imposed quota on Jewish reporters, Schorr went to work for Edward R. Murrow at CBS in 1953.

The signal that he had made the grade came on New Year’s Day 1956, as “Murrow’s Boys” made the transfer to television. Schorr had left his post in Russia to join Howard K. Smith, Richard C. Hottelet, Eric Sevareid, and Murrow’s other far-flung correspondents … » More …

Spring 2005

The Show Makers: Great Directors of the American Musical Theatre

Seek out and interview 12 of the most creative and highly respected directors of the American musical theatre, and let them reveal how they went about directing some of the most important and influential musicals of the 20th century. No easy task, but that’s exactly what Lawrence Thelen (’93 M.A.) successfully accomplished in his new book, The Show Makers: Great Directors of the American Musical Theatre.

The book brings together the wide-ranging and diverse approaches of its contributors, and reading it is like bringing these famous directors into your own living room for a casual, yet highly informative chat that is peppered with such phrases … » More …