Book

Summer 2005

Home Stand: Growing Up in Sports

Poetry in motion he wasn’t. At least not on the basketball court, even though 6’ 9” Jim McKean, his fadeaway jump shot, and his rebounding (he still holds the single-game Far West Classic rebounding record of 27, set against Princeton in 1967) were anchors of the rebirth of Washington State University men’s hoops in the mid-’60s.

“He didn’t have real good feet and was not a great athlete,” Marv Harshman, WSU’s head coach at the time, said a couple of weeks before the start of this year’s NCAA tournament. But that wasn’t the whole story.

“He had great hands, and he played with his head,” … » More …

Summer 2004

Hike Lewis and Clark's Idaho

Anyone interested in exploring firsthand the mountains and forests Lewis and Clark traversed in 1805-06 in western Montana and the Idaho panhandle will find this guidebook indispensable. Hike Lewis and Clark’s Idaho is a collaboration between writer Mary Aegerter, a frequent contributor to Washington State Magazine, and Steve Russell, a native of the region who has researched its historic trails.

The heart of the book is a set of detailed reviews of 44 trails between Lolo Ranger Station in Montana and Weippe, Idaho, accessible from either U.S. Highway 12, the Lolo Motorway—a primitive road that parallels the highway—or the Selway River. Aegerter rounds out the … » More …

Winter 2003

Hiding from Salesmen

“Talk happiness,” wrote the prolific poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox about 125 years ago. “The world is sad enough / Without your woe.” The former U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins has largely gone in that direction, and so has Scott Poole (’92 B.S. Psych.; ’95 B.A. English), who lives in Spokane and reads his poems Monday mornings on public radio station KPBX (91.1 FM).

In short, if one has a sense of humor—preferably of the absurd as well—it’s hard not to like most of the 43 poems that comprise Poole’s second book. “I’m sleeping on the coffee table tonight. / I think someone stole my bed.” … » More …

Fall 2003

Flames in Our Forest: Disaster or Renewal?

Forest fires have been much in the news. Beginning with the Yellowstone fires in 1988, the West has lived through a series of intense fire years. In 2000, the federal government spent nearly $1.6 billion fighting fires. But over the same period there has been a discordant message: fires, we are told, shaped the forests and the wildlife that inhabit them; fires are, in fact, necessary to the continued existence of many species of plants and animals. Smokey the Bear’s message of fire’s destructive nature, his plea on behalf of other woodland creatures that “fires destroy more than trees,” has lost its venerable certainty.

Are … » More …

Winter 2007

Famous

When it comes to fame and poetry, the locus classicus surely must be this passage from Milton’s “Lycidas”: “Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise / (That last infirmity of noble mind) / To scorn delights, and live laborious days.” We of the 21st century have not so far shown ourselves much disposed to scorn any delights at all, most likely because we are not inclined to accept Phoebus Apollo’s sermon to the effect that “Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil.”

But the fame we encounter in the 51 generally short poems of Famous, by Kathleen Flenniken ’83, is … » More …

Fall 2006

Idaho's Bunker Hill: The Rise and Fall of a Great Mining Company, 1885

Bunker Hill finally has a book worthy of its story. BH, during its heyday, was one of the nation’s most important mining and smelting operations, and wielded unprecedented influence over Idaho politics. At the time it closed in 1981 it produced 15 percent of America’s silver and zinc, and 17 percent of its lead. Much has been written about BH. But this is the first book to encapsulate its entire history, from lode discovery to company closure.

Aiken weaves together many stories. Hers is one of the best tellings of the oft-romanticized origins of the mine that Noah Kellogg’s donkey might or might not have … » More …

Summer 2002

The Dynamics of Change: A History of the Washington State Library

Who better to write about the Washington State Library than Maryan Reynolds, state librarian from 1951 to 1974? She also played an important role in procuring the State Library building constructed in 1959 on the Capitol grounds in Olympia. The library moved to Tumwater and was opened to the public January 2, 2002 in its new location.

The Dynamics of Change is an original and valuable history of the Washington State Library from its territorial beginnings in 1853 to the late 1990s. Reynolds provides a personal account of the library’s expansion since the 1940s, when she joined the staff.

The author chronicles the development of … » More …

Summer 2008

Just Don’t Get Sick: Access to Health Care in the Aftermath of Welfare

Karen Seccombe and Kim Hoffman
Rutgers University Press, 2007

Victor Sidel, the co-founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, observes, “statistics are people with the tears washed away.” Just Don’t Get Sick, a new book by Karen Seccombe (’85 Ph.D. Soc.) and Kim Hoffman, offers a litany of statistics about the plight of Oregon families who formerly received welfare benefits, but the tears glisten on these pages, thanks to skillful threading of the individual stories and observations of the study subjects. It’s a compelling and often gut-wrenching analysis of the frayed social safety net in 21st-century … » More …

Summer 2008

Dizzy

Stacy A. Nyikos and Kary Lee ’86
Stonehorse Publishing, Tulsa, OK, 2007

Meet Dizzy, a Pacific white-sided dolphin who romps through the pages of this book at a—well, at a dizzying pace. Aimed at a readership of 3- to 8-year-olds, the story, such as it is, follows Dizzy through days spent flying among the clouds, high-diving, and “porpoising” frenetically about his watery world. But then he catches sight of a sea lion, a “fish shepherd” who herds sardines and hake, and realizes: “Am I missing fresh fish? . . . But that’s just not right!” … » More …

Fall 2008

The Little Book of Dinosaurs

I can remember, as a boy of 10 or 12 in Massachusetts in the early ’50s, prowling the stacks at the Cambridge Public Library⁠—a ponderous but beautiful Romanesque stone building set in a park between Cambridge High and Latin School and Rindge Tech—looking for books on paleontology. I didn’t know the word “paleontology” then, and even if I did, I wouldn’t have cared what it meant. What I wanted to know about was dinosaurs. All I could find were text-heavy tomes, not especially designed for people my age, sparsely peppered with meager little line drawings, plus, if I was lucky, a full-page black-and-white plate or … » More …