Review

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 …

Fall 2002

East West Encounter

From the first quietly unsettling notes of Susan Chan’s East West Encounter, it’s clear that this is no ordinary piano CD. A delicate initial passage suddenly explodes into a dramatic and resonant section of lower keys; two contemporary pieces rooted in Chinese literature are an intriguing lead-in to Beethoven’s Sonata in E minor, op. 90 and Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz No. 1. That the structure and sound of music can operate as a sort of narrative language is quite evident here. These are selections that evoke the implacability of landscape, the sweet sharp pain of spiritual longing, and the heady delirium of early love.

Chan … » 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 …

Winter 2006

Handmade

It’s no accident that the cover art for Paul Ely Smith’s compact disc, Handmade, features a detail from an oriental rug. Paul, an instructor in the General Education Program at Washington State University, has been a collector of tribal woven pieces—carpets, bag faces, kilims, etc.—from places like Afghanistan, Iran, and Turkey for many years. And, of course, they’re all handmade—just like the fretless gourd banjo, also pictured on the cover, which Paul himself built, and which he plays on the CD’s opening track. Paul plays all the other instruments heard on Handmade, including the guitar he built in 2000, his great-grandfather’s 1893 Fairbanks “Electric” banjo … » More …

Spring 2003

The Ministry of Leadership: Heart and Theory

I was honored when asked to review The Ministry of Leadership: Heart and Theory, by former Washington State University president Glenn Terrell (1967-1985). I couldn’t agree more with President V. Lane Rawlins’s assessment: “Anyone who loves Washington State University will find this book irresistible”; or the appraisal offered by former Washington governor and U.S. senator Dan Evans: “Glenn Terrell has produced a powerful personal memoir. He presided over Washington State University during one of the most troubling and activist periods in our nation’s history. His leadership style successfully guided the University during its difficult times.”

In The Ministry of Leadership, Terrell divides his tenure … » More …

Winter 2005

Kill the Editor

A job warranting more assassination attempts than the president of the United States exists in cities around the world.

The job? Editing a newspaper.

John R. Irby, a WSU clinical associate professor of communication, wrote a new book, Kill the Editor: The Often Bizarre Relationship with Readers, that chronicles 25 years of newspaper experience from the editor’s chair.

Irby collected personal stories and letters from readers for the bulk of the book’s material. The book highlights the emotions of all humans from a perspective the public never experiences: That of a professional journalist.

Leticia Gomez, editor for American Book Publishing, Irby’s publisher, said the book … » More …

Winter 2001

Investment Madness: How Psychology Affects Your Investing and What to Do About It

In Investment Madness: How Psychology Affects Your Investing…and What to Do About It, John R. Nofsinger (’88 Elect. Engr., ’96 Ph.D. Fin.) debunks the accepted wisdom that people make rational investment decisions. They don’t. The book lays out the psychological biases and emotions that often trip up investors, impair their decisions, and consequently jeopardize their wealth.

Unlike other books on finances, this one “focuses on the reader—the investor, rather than on the stock market and investment strategy,” says the Washington State University assistant professor of finance.

While investors blame financial analysts and overhyped stocks for the depressed state of many nest eggs following the recent … » More …