Autobiography

Summer 2018

Bound

James McKean ’68, ’74

Truman State University Press: 2017

Bound presents a lyrical memoir about growing up in the Pacific Northwest and the women whose feminine fortitude contributed to the author’s life.

Taking readers into the kitchens and parlors of mid-twentieth-century America, McKean lovingly unpacks the attic trunk, sharing the exploits of his wife, mother, grandmother, and great-great-grandmother-in-law Rachel Cartwright Lee, among others.

At a time when ladies were expected to stay … » More …

Spring 2017

John McCallum in his own words

To immerse himself in the lives of those he wrote about, John McCallum would spend extraordinary amounts of time with them, their friends and their families. He collected numerous tidbits and observations along the way, many of which he shared in his 1969 autobiography, Going Their Way.

Here are a few excerpts:

On the miserly nature of Ty Cobb

The notoriously mean-spirited and confrontational baseball legend had invested his earnings wisely and was still worth millions of dollars nearly three decades after retiring, which is when McCallum began profiling Cobb for the first of two books he’d write about the Detroit Tigers star. … » More …

Spring 2009

Cougar Memory

An essential part of being a Cougar (as well as being human) seems to be the need to tell one’s story of one’s youth and experiences here at Washington State University.

To make it easier to do so and to share it with your fellow Cougs, we have introduced a new feature on our website called Our Story.

Together, the 140,000 or so living alumni of WSU have an extraordinary collective story to tell, not necessarily of the comings and goings of presidents and professors, of scientific breakthroughs and other major news, but of the day-to-day life on campus, of one’s … » 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 …

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 …

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 …