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Alaska

An American Colony

By Stephen W. Haycox

Alaska often looms large as a remote, wild place with endless resources and endlessly independent, resourceful people. Yet it has always been part of larger stories: the movement of Indigenous peoples from Asia into the...

After the Blast

The Ecological Recovery of Mount St. Helens

By Eric Wagner

On May 18, 1980, people all over the world watched with awe and horror as Mount St. Helens erupted. Fifty-seven people were killed and hundreds of square miles of what had been lush forests and...

Proud Raven, Panting Wolf

Carving Alaska's New Deal Totem Parks

By Emily L. Moore

Among Southeast Alaska’s best-known tourist attractions are its totem parks, showcases for monumental wood sculptures by Tlingit and Haida artists. Although the art form is centuries old, the parks date back only to the waning...

New Deal Art in the Northwest

The WPA and Beyond

By Margaret E. Bullock

From December 1933 to February 1943, as part of a sprawling economic stimulus package, four federal programs hired artists to create public artworks and provide art-making opportunities to millions of Americans. When this initiative abruptly...

Seattle, Past to Present

By Roger Sale. Introduction by Knute Berger

Roger Sale’s Seattle, Past to Present has become a beloved reflection of Seattle’s history and its possible futures as imagined in 1976, when the book was first published. Drawing on demographic analysis, residential surveys, portraiture,...

The Whale and the Cupcake

Stories of Subsistence, Longing, and Community in Alaska

By Julia O'Malley. Foreword by Kim Severson

From fish and fiddleheads to salmonberries and Spam, Alaskan cuisine spans the two extremes of locally abundant wild foods and shelf-stable ingredients produced thousands of miles away. As immigration shapes Anchorage into one of the...

Walking the High Desert

Encounters with Rural America along the Oregon Desert Trail

By Ellen Waterston

Former high desert rancher Ellen Waterston writes of a wild, essentially roadless, starkly beautiful part of the American West. Following the recently created 750-mile Oregon Desert Trail, she embarks on a creative and inquisitive exploration,...

Shaping Seattle Architecture

A Historical Guide to the Architects, Second Edition

By Jeffrey Karl Ochsner

The first edition of Shaping Seattle Architecture, published in 1994, introduced readers to Seattle’s architects by showcasing the work of those who were instrumental in creating the region’s built environment. Twenty years later, the second...

The Gift of Knowledge / Ttnúwit Átawish Nch'inch'imamí

Reflections on Sahaptin Ways

By Virginia R. Beavert and Janne L. Underriner

The Gift of Knowledge / Ttnuwit Atawish Nch’inch’imamí is a treasure trove of material for those interested in Native American culture. Author Virginia Beavert grew up in a traditional, Indian-speaking household. Both her parents and...

The Propeller under the Bed

A Personal History of Homebuilt Aircraft

By Eileen A. Bjorkman

On July 25, 2010, Arnold Ebneter flew across the country in a plane he designed and built himself, setting an aviation world record for aircraft of its class. He was eighty-two at the time and...

Looking for Betty MacDonald

The Egg, the Plague, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, and I

By Paula Becker

Betty Bard MacDonald (1907–1958), the best-selling author of The Egg and I and the classic Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle children’s books, burst onto the literary scene shortly after the end of World War II. Readers embraced her...

The Landscape Architecture of Richard Haag

From Modern Space to Urban Ecological Design

By Thaïsa Way. Foreword by Marc Treib

Richard Haag is best known for his rehabilitation of Gas Works Park in Seattle and for a series of remarkable gardens at the Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island. He reshaped the field of landscape architecture...

The Last Wilderness

By Murray Morgan. Introduction by Tim McNulty

Murray Morgan’s classic history of the Olympic Peninsula, originally published in 1955, evokes a remote American wilderness “as large as the state of Massachusetts, more rugged than the Rockies, its lowlands blanketed by a cool...

Reclaiming the Reservation

Histories of Indian Sovereignty Suppressed and Renewed

By Alexandra Harmon

In the 1970s the Quinault and Suquamish, like dozens of Indigenous nations across the United States, asserted their sovereignty by applying their laws to everyone on their reservations. This included arresting non-Indians for minor offenses,...

Gardening with Native Plants of the Pacific Northwest

By Arthur R. Kruckeberg and Linda Chalker-Scott

The Pacific Northwest abounds with native plants that bring beauty to the home garden while offering food and shelter to birds, bees, butterflies, and other wildlife. Elegant trilliums thrive in woodland settings. Showy lewisias stand...

Sculpture on a Grand Scale

Jack Christiansen’s Thin Shell Modernism

By Tyler Sprague

The Kingdome, John (“Jack”) Christiansen’s best-known work, was the largest freestanding concrete dome in the world. Built amid public controversy, the multipurpose arena was designed to stand for a thousand years but was demolished in...

Fishes of the Salish Sea

Puget Sound and the Straits of Georgia and Juan de Fuca

By Theodore Wells Pietsch and James Wilder Orr. Illustrated by Joseph R. Tomelleri

Fishes of the Salish Sea is the definitive guide to the identification and history of the marine and anadromous fishes of Puget Sound and the Straits of Georgia and Juan de Fuca. This comprehensive three-volume...

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...

Razor Clams

Buried Treasure of the Pacific Northwest

By David Berger

In this lively history and celebration of the Pacific razor clam, David Berger shares with us his love affair with the glossy, gold-colored Siliqua patula and gets into the nitty-gritty of how to dig, clean,...

Understanding Northwest Coast Indigenous Jewelry

The Art, the Artists, the History

By Alexander Dawkins. Foreword by Corrine Hunt

Indigenous hand-engraved jewelry from the Pacific Northwest Coastis among the most distinctive, innovative, and highly sought-after art being produced in North America today. But these artworks are more than just stunning—every bracelet, ring, and pendant...