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Heaven on the Half Shell

The Story of the Oyster in the Pacific Northwest

By David George Gordon, Samantha Larson, and MaryAnn Barron Wagner. Foreword by Kenneth K. Chew

Heaven on the Half Shell offers a thoroughly researched and richly illustrated history of the Pacific Northwest’s beloved bivalve, the oyster. Starting with the earliest evidence of sea gardens and clam beds from 11,500 years...

Skidegate House Models

From Haida Gwaii to the Chicago World's Fair and Beyond

By Robin K. Wright

In 1892 seventeen Haida artists were commissioned to carve a model of HlGaagilda Llnagaay (the village of Skidegate on Haida Gwaii, British Columbia) for the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. The Skidegate model, featuring twenty-nine...

Jesintel

Living Wisdom from Coast Salish Elders

By Children of the Setting Sun Productions. Edited by Darrell Hillaire and Natasha Frey. Photographs by Fay "Beau" Garreau, Jr.. Contributions by Lynda V. Mapes and Nicole Brown. Afterword by Danita Washington

Dynamic and diverse, Coast Salish culture is bound together by shared values and relations that generate a resilient worldview. Jesintel—"to learn and grow together"—characterizes the spirit of this book, which brings the cultural teachings of...

Black Lives in Alaska

A History of African Americans in the Far Northwest

By Ian C. Hartman and David Reamer. Foreword by Calvin E. Williams

The history of Black Alaskans runs deep and spans generations. Decades before statehood and earlier even than the Klondike gold rush of the 1890s, Black men and women participated in Alaska’s politics and culture. They...

Between the Tides in Washington and Oregon

Exploring Beaches and Tidepools

By Ryan P. Kelly, Terrie Klinger, and John J. Meyer

A spectacular variety of life flourishes between the ebb and flow of high and low tide. exist some of the most vibrant ecosystems on Earth. Anemones talk to each other through chemical signaling, clingfish grip...

Stomp and Shout

R&B and the Origins of Northwest Rock and Roll

By Peter Blecha

Long before the world discovered grunge, the Pacific Northwest was already home to a singular music culture. In the late 1950s, locals had codified a distinct offshoot of rockin’ R&B, and a surprising number of...

The Art of Ceremony

Voices of Renewal from Indigenous Oregon

By Rebecca J. Dobkins

The practice of ceremony offers ways to build relationships between the land and its beings, reflecting change while drawing upon deep relationships going back millennia. Ceremony may involve intricate and spectacular regalia but may also...

Seattle from the Margins

Exclusion, Erasure, and the Making of a Pacific Coast City

By Megan Asaka

From the origins of the city in the mid-nineteenth century to the beginning of World War II, Seattle's urban workforce consisted overwhelmingly of migrant laborers who powered the seasonal, extractive economy of the Pacific Northwest....

Emily Carr

Life & Work

By Lisa Baldissera

Emily Carr (1871–1945) gained prominence when female painters were not recognized internationally. Her work reveals a fascination with questions inspired by the Canadian sea, landscapes, and people, reflecting a profound commitment to the land she...

Iljuwas Bill Reid

Life & Work

By Gerald McMaster

Few twentieth-century artists were catalysts for the reclamation of a culture, but Iljuwas Bill Reid (1920–1998) was among them. The first book on Reid by an Indigenous scholar details his incredible journey to becoming one...

Unsettling Native Art Histories on the Northwest Coast

By Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse, Aldona Jonaitis

Inseparable from its communities, Northwest Coast art functions aesthetically and performatively beyond the scope of non-Indigenous scholarship, from demonstrating kinship connections to manifesting spiritual power. Contributors to this volume foreground Indigenous understandings in recognition of...

Writing Labor’s Emancipation

The Anarchist Life and Times of Jay Fox

By Greg Hall

Jay Fox (1870–1961) was a journalist, intellectual, and labor militant whose influence rippled across the country. In Writing Labor's Emancipation, historian Greg Hall traces Fox's unorthodox life to highlight the shifting dynamics in US labor...

The Forging of a Black Community

Seattle’s Central District from 1870 through the Civil Rights Era

By Quintard Taylor. Forewords by Quin'Nita Cobbins-Modica and Norman Rice. Afterword by Albert S. Broussard

Seattle's first black resident was a sailor named Manuel Lopes who arrived in 1858 and became the small community's first barber. He left in the early 1870s to seek economic prosperity elsewhere, but as Seattle...

Invasive Flora of the West Coast

British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest

By Collin Varner

A compact, full-colour field guide to the growing number of invasive plant species spreading across coastal BC and the Pacific Northwest, highlighting their hazards and uses.

The spread of invasive plant species is a growing concern...

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...

The Grizzly in the Driveway

The Return of Bears to a Crowded American West

By Rob Chaney

Four decades ago, the areas around Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks sheltered the last few hundred surviving grizzlies in the Lower 48 states. Protected by the Endangered Species Act, their population has surged to more...

After the Blast

The Ecological Recovery of Mount St. Helens

By Eric Wagner

A CHOICE OUTSTANDING ACADEMIC TITLE

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...

The River That Made Seattle

A Human and Natural History of the Duwamish

By BJ Cummings

With bountiful salmon and fertile plains, the Duwamish River has drawn people to its shores over the centuries for trading, transport, and sustenance. Chief Se’alth and his allies fished and lived in villages here and...

Uncle Rico's Encore

Mostly True Stories of Filipino Seattle

By Peter Bacho

From the 1950s through the 1970s, blue-collar Filipino Americans, or Pinoys, lived a hardscrabble existence. Immigrant parents endured blatant racism, sporadic violence, and poverty while their US-born children faced more subtle forms of racism, such...

Feminista Frequencies

Community Building through Radio in the Yakima Valley

By Monica De La Torre

Beginning in the 1970s Chicana and Chicano organizers turned to community radio broadcasting to educate, entertain, and uplift Mexican American listeners across the United States. In rural areas, radio emerged as the most effective medium...