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Slapping Leather

Queer Cowfolx at the Gay Rodeo

By Elyssa Ford and Rebecca Scofield

Campy and competitive, gay rodeo offers a community of refuge that straddles the urban and rural. Since the mid-1970s, gay rodeos have provided space to both embrace and challenge the idealized masculinity associated with the...

Labor under Siege

Big Bob McEllrath and the ILWU’s Fight for Organized Labor in an Anti-Union Era

By Harvey Schwartz with Ronald E. Magden

Big Bob—six-feet-four Robert McEllrath's waterfront handle—was heralded for his powerful speaking style, charisma, unifying vision, and negotiating prowess. President of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) for twelve eventful years, McEllrath retired in 2018...

Homewaters

A Human and Natural History of Puget Sound

By David B. Williams

Not far from Seattle skyscrapers live 150-year-old clams, more than 250 species of fish, and underwater kelp forests as complex as any terrestrial ecosystem. For millennia, vibrant Coast Salish communities have lived beside these waters...

Pioneering Death

The Violence of Boyhood in Turn-of-the-Century Oregon

By Peter Boag

On an autumn day in 1895, eighteen-year-old Loyd Montgomery shot his parents and a neighbor in a gruesome act that reverberated beyond the small confines of Montgomery's Oregon farming community. The dispassionate slaying and Montgomery's...

Oregon

This Storied Land

By William G. Robbins

Oregon’s landscape boasts brilliant waterfalls, towering volcanoes, productive river valleys, and far-reaching high deserts. People have lived in the region for at least twelve thousand years, during which they established communities; named places; harvested fish,...

Outriders

Rodeo at the Fringes of the American West

By Rebecca Scofield

Rodeo is a dangerous and painful performance in which only the strongest and most skilled riders succeed. In the popular imagination, the western rodeo hero is often a stoic white man who embodies the toughness...

Seismic City

An Environmental History of San Francisco's 1906 Earthquake

By Joanna L. Dyl. Foreword by Paul S. Sutter

On April 18, 1906, a 7.8-magnitude earthquake shook the San Francisco region, igniting fires that burned half the city. The disaster in all its elements — earthquake, fires, and recovery — profoundly disrupted the urban...

The City Is More Than Human

An Animal History of Seattle

By Frederick L. Brown. Foreword by Paul S. Sutter

Winner of the 2017 Virginia Marie Folkins Award, Association of King County Historical Organizations (AKCHO)
Winner of the 2017 Hal K. Rothman Book Prize, Western History Association

Seattle would not exist without animals. Animals have played a...

Counterpunch

The Cultural Battles over Heavyweight Prizefighting in the American West

By Meg Frisbee

Boxing was popular in the American West long before Las Vegas became its epicenter. However, not everyone in the region was a fan. Counterpunch examines how the sport’s meteoric rise in popularity in the West...

Bracero Railroaders

The Forgotten World War II Story of Mexican Workers in the U.S. West

By Erasmo Gamboa

Desperate for laborers to keep the trains moving during World War II, the U.S. and Mexican governments created a now mostly forgotten bracero railroad program that sent a hundred thousand Mexican workers across the border...

Native Students at Work

American Indian Labor and Sherman Institute's Outing Program, 1900-1945

By Kevin Whalen. Foreword by Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert

Native Students at Work tells the stories of Native people from around the American Southwest who participated in labor programs at Sherman Institute, a federal Indian boarding school in Riverside, California. The school placed young...

Early Rock Art of the American West

The Geometric Enigma

By Ekkehart Malotki. Ellen Dissanayake

A CHOICE OUTSTANDING ACADEMIC TITLE

The earliest rock art - in the Americas as elsewhere - is geometric or abstract. Until Early Rock Art in the American West, however, no book-length study has been devoted to...

Power in the Telling

Grand Ronde, Warm Springs, and Intertribal Relations in the Casino Era

By Brook Colley. Foreword by David G. Lewis

From 1998 through 2013, the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs sought to develop a casino in Cascade Locks, Oregon. This prompted objections from the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, who already operated a lucrative casino...

Skid Road

An Informal Portrait of Seattle

By Murray Morgan. Introduction by Mary Ann Gwinn

Skid Road tells the story of Seattle “from the bottom up,” offering an informal and engaging portrait of the Emerald City’s first century, as seen through the lives of some of its most colorful citizens....

A Chemehuevi Song

The Resilience of a Southern Paiute Tribe

By Clifford E. Trafzer. Foreword by Larry Myers

The Chemehuevi of the Twenty-Nine Palms tribe of Southern California stands as a testament to the power of perseverance. This small, nomadic band of Southern Paiute Indians has been repeatedly marginalized by European settlers, other...

Asians in Colorado

A History of Persecution and Perseverance in the Centennial State

By William Wei

Providing the most comprehensive examination to date of Asians in the Centennial State, William Wei addresses a wide range of experiences, from anti-Chinese riots in late nineteenth-century Denver to the World War II incarceration of...

Before Yellowstone

Native American Archaeology in the National Park

By Douglas H. MacDonald

Since 1872, visitors have flocked to Yellowstone National Park to gaze in awe at its dramatic geysers, stunning mountains, and impressive wildlife. Yet more than a century of archaeological research shows that the wild landscape...

Alaska's Skyboys

Cowboy Pilots and the Myth of the Last Frontier

By Katherine Johnson Ringsmuth

This fascinating account of the development of aviation in Alaska examines the daring missions of pilots who initially opened up the territory for military positioning and later for trade and tourism.

Early Alaskan military and...

Chinook Resilience

Heritage and Cultural Revitalization on the Lower Columbia River

By Jon D. Daehnke. Foreword by Tony A. Johnson

The Chinook Indian Nation—whose ancestors lived along both shores of the lower Columbia River, as well as north and south along the Pacific coast at the river’s mouth—continue to reside near traditional lands. Because of...

Company Towns of the Pacific Northwest

By Linda Carlson. With a new preface

“Company town.” The words evoke images of rough-and-tumble loggers and gritty miners, of dreary shacks in isolated villages, of wages paid in scrip good only at price-gouging company stores of paternalistic employers. But these stereotypes...