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Summer 2008

The Coming Depression

 

Illustration David Wheeler

 

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been waiting for this all my life. Growing up with parents born in the crash year of ’29, and with grandparents marked and ennobled by sacrifice and ingenuity in living well with nothing, I’ve amounted to nothing but a Baby Boomer: first coddled and spoiled, and soon to bring down, single-handedly, the world’s climate stability and Social Security.

But now I have a chance to redeem myself. … » More …

Spring 2009

Sudoku for Lunch

Sudoku for Lunch book

How does one review a book of Sudoku puzzles? There’s no plot, no metaphor, no elegant or awkward use of language. There are just the puzzles, which themselves are pure pattern.

But the puzzle-making process clearly involves skill and attention, because Sudoku books, like novels and collections of poetry, vary widely in quality. Sudoku For Lunch is a lively, fun, and well-designed example of the genre. (And it has the added benefit of being printed on high-quality paper that stands up well to erasure.)

Riensche presents 250 puzzles in groups based on how long … » More …

Spring 2009

White Jade and Other Stories

White Jade book

The seven stories in this collection are delightful. Sometimes funny and even perverse, they show an extravagant imagination, and a very sharp political perspective deepened by their concern for how wars and historical dislocations jam people into corners from which it sometimes takes generations to escape. The novella which follows them, White Jade, has a distinctly different tone and is a marvelous adventure in “autobiography.”It is more like a channeling or act of loving reconstitution of a deceased mother’s voice than anything like a memoir or confession or any of those other … » More …

Winter 2008

Conquistador: Hernan Cortés, King Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztecs

I suspect I am a good example of the intended audience for this book, which is a popular account of the strange, tragic relationship between Cortés and Montezuma, and the destruction of a way of life. I can’t remember reading anything about Cortés or Montezuma since high school, other than an occasional National Geographic article. So, I am not the best person to comment on the scholarship. But I can comment on the readability as a popular history, and Levy captured me in the initial pages. He has a way of spinning a good story, of keeping the pages turning, and as the pages turn, … » More …

Winter 2002

Seasoned with Love: Favorite Heart-Healthy Recipes with Reflections about Food, Family, Friends, and Faith

Carolyn Frances Meagher (’56 Speech) conceived a passion for cooking and baking while learning to make cinnamon rolls in a high school cooking class in Pullman, Washington. In time, rich desserts and “anything with cheese” became her trademark among family and friends.

However, the high-fat dinners came to an abrupt end several years ago during a health crisis that triggered an evaluation of her family’s dietary patterns. Meagher began experimenting with her favorite recipes—and looking for new ones—to lower the cholesterol and fat content without losing flavor.

In Seasoned with Love, she presents an eclectic selection of her favorite home-style recipes, all … » 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 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 …

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 …