Book

Spring 2003

Palouse Country

George Bedirian’s Palouse Country is a handsomely produced volume of over 100 duotone photographs. This revised WSU Press edition contains many previously unpublished images that provide an eloquent insight into a premotorized age of magnificent barn structures and the towns that supported their production.

These striking photographs of agricultural architecture are reminiscent of the photographic style of Wright Morris and Walker Evans. They are juxtaposed with the magnificent temporal seasonal landscapes of the Palouse. Bedirian has produced this volume of images as an insightful mythology to farming and the grandeur of this exceptional region. His images reflect a visceral appreciation and an understanding of … » More …

Fall 2003

Opening Minds: A Journey of Extraordinary Encounters, Crop Circles, and Resonance

In Opening Minds: A Journey of Extraordinary Encounters, Crop Circles, and Resonance Simeon Hein (’93 Ph.D. Soc.) sets out to show that Western rationalism and the rise of technology have alienated us from our world and from each other, but that by tapping into the “quantum perspective,”; we can access hitherto unknown realities and achieve integration with the universe. Hein provides an insightful sociological critique of information technology and our uses of time, then launches into discussions of his own experiences with “the universal mind grid”; through resonant viewing (a form of telepathic perception), encounters with extraterrestrial beings, and some of the stranger aspects … » More …

Winter 2004

On All Sides Nowhere

Bill Gruber (’79 Ph.D. English) and his wife moved to rural Benewah County, Idaho, in 1972, inexperienced in all the necessary skills, but filled with a desire for solitude, simplicity, and natural beauty. In 1979 they left, after turning their 40 acres into a homestead—and after regularly commuting the 50 miles to Moscow and then later Pullman for graduate studies.

More than 20 years later, Gruber summarized his experiences and insights in this quick-reading memoir. His book is light and comical, as he gently pokes fun at his own ignorance and at the oddnesses of his neighbors, but it is also deep and honest in … » More …

Summer 2008

Northwest Trees: Identifying and Understanding the Region’s Native Trees

Stephen F. Arno ’65 and Ramona P. Hammerly
The Mountaineers Books, Seattle, 2007

Trees recall memories. Both thicken through the years, become storm-roughened, and may persist despite broken branches. We look at trees the way we look to memories as familiar waymarks in our personal landscapes. The new edition of Stephen Arno (’65 Forestry) and Ramona Hammerly’s Northwest Trees offers to enlarge one’s landscape of trees. The beauty of this book, with its insights and plucky facts, welcomes familiarity with trees. Reading Northwest Trees turns trees into sharper memories.

This new volume—characterized as an “anniversary … » More …

Fall 2008

Return to Warden’s Grove: Science, Desire and the Lives of Sparrows

Warden’s Grove is a tiny cluster of spruce trees in the generally treeless expanse of the north Canadian tundra, and Christopher Norment – who received his master’s degree from WSU in 1982 – spent three long summers there studying sparrows; this excellent little book is his account of those summers. Readers expecting a tale of high arctic adventure will be disappointed – there are no attacks by ferocious grizzlies, no horrifying acts perpetrated by men made desperate by starvation, and no daring escapades by intrepid explorers of the last frontier. Instead, Norment delivers a tale of patient waiting and watching, of detailing the daily lives … » More …

Fall 2003

Margarita: A Guatemalan Peace Corps Experience

Starting at age 62, nutritionist Marjorie DeMoss Casebolt (’47 Home Econ. Ed.) served two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Guatemala. In Margarita: A Guatemalan Peace Corps Experience, she narrates her efforts to educate pregnant and nursing mothers in the basics of nutrition, sketches portraits of fellow volunteers, and describes the harrowing effects of poverty and ignorance among community members. She also provides a wealth of detail about her daily life, from her difficulties with Spanish to her annoyance at family members who insist on keeping the radio on at full volume.

Because her story reads like a string of undigested journal entries, offering … » More …

Fall 2002

Great Lodges of the National Parks

Teddy Roosevelt once claimed the best idea America ever had was its national parks. After flipping the cover open on Great Lodges of the National Parks, by Christine Barnes, readers should have an easy time understanding why he said that.

The book is an eye-grabber, thanks in part to the work of Washington State University alumna Linda McCray (’81 B.A. Fine Arts), who designed and illustrated it, and to the photographs of Fred Pflughoft and another WSU alum, David Morris (’93 B.A. Pol. Sci.). McCray makes room in her design for double-page photo spreads that showcase the natural beauty of 11 Western national parks and … » More …

Fall 2003

Irrigated Eden: The Making of an Agricultural Landscape in the America

This gem of a book is actually about the gem state, Idaho—specifically, the Snake River Plain of southern Idaho, where farmers, engineers, lawyers, bankers, and politicians have carved an agricultural landscape out of the parched and dusty sagebrush desert. With deft prose and engaging anecdotes, author Mark Fiege (’85 M.A. Hist.), a professor of history at Colorado State University, systematically traces the 100-year history of the creation and maintenance of the irrigation infrastructure that made farming possible in the Snake River plain. Praising it as “an ingenious, intricate, technological system,” Fiege nevertheless offers sober assessments of the economic inefficiencies, ecological losses, engineering foibles, and political … » More …

Winter 2001

Hungry for Wood: An American Memoir from the Shores of Iwo Jima to the Tundra of Alaska

An Alaska sourdough with Washington State University credentials, C. Herb Rhodes has written his memoir book, Hungry for Wood: An American Memoir from the Shores of Iwo Jima to the Tundra of Alaska. The book derives its name from an Indian translation of the author’s hometown of Hoquiam.

The story is both a romance of the sea and an epic. Rhodes’s late father, Charles, a tugboat engineer, was unemployed for eight years during hard economic times, forcing the family to carve out a living in the woods near Hoquiam.

Both father and son were wounded during World War II. Charles, a Merchant Marine officer on … » More …

Summer 2007

Horses They Rode

Midway through Sid Gustafson’s new novel, Horses They Rode, I found myself put in mind of all the second chances I have had. His take on the reknitting of family, friendship, and one man’s tumultuous life is such a story—a tale of second chances where hope effervesces across a storyscape of high country, horse corrals, drunkenness, and regret that seems, at moments, irresolvable. It’s a wholly American novel, for of course, America is a land forgiving of first mistakes—where a shot at trying again is fair and right.

Wendel Ingraham, Gustafson’s protagonist, is a ranch hand who has roamed Washington State’s Inland Empire, Idaho’s panhandle, … » More …