Washington University Press Search Results Page

Hiking Washington's History

By Judy Bentley and Craig Romano

For thousands of years people have traveled across Washington’s spectacular terrain, establishing footpaths and roads to reach hunting grounds and coal mines high in the mountains, fishing sites and trade emporiums on the rivers, forests...

The Coming of the Spirit of Pestilence

Introduced Infectious Diseases and Population Decline among Northwest Coast Indians, 1774-1874

By Robert T. Boyd

In the late 1700s when European colonizers arrived on the Northwest Coast, they reported the presence of vigorous, diverse cultures—Tlingit, Haida, Kwakwaka’wakw (Kwakiutl), Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka), Coast Salish, and Chinookan—with a population conservatively estimated at more...

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...

Becoming Nisei

Japanese American Urban Lives in Prewar Tacoma

By Lisa M. Hoffman and Mary L. Hanneman

Tacoma’s vibrant Nihonmachi of the 1920s and '30s was home to a significant number of first generation Japanese immigrants and their second generation American children, and these families formed tight-knit bonds despite their diverse religious,...

Alden Mason

Paintings

By Roger Hull. with essays by Regina Hackett and Robert Ayers. Foreword by Chuck Close

Born in Everett, Washington, painter Alden Mason (1919–2014) earned his MFA from the University of Washington in 1947, launching what would become an extraordinary career as both artist and teacher. He reinvented his style several...

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...

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,...

The Port of Missing Men

Billy Gohl, Labor, and Brutal Times in the Pacific Northwest

By Aaron Goings

In the early twentieth century so many dead bodies surfaced in the rivers around Aberdeen, Washington, that they were nicknamed the “floater fleet.” When Billy Gohl (1873–1927), a powerful union official, was arrested for murder,...

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...

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 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...

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,...

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...

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...

Puget's Sound

A Narrative of Early Tacoma and the Southern Sound

By Murray Morgan. Introduction by Michael Sean Sullivan

With the same ability to make personalities and events come alive that characterizes his classic Skid Road, Murray Morgan here tells the colorful story of Tacoma, “the City of Destiny,” and southern Puget Sound, where...

The Deepest Roots

Finding Food and Community on a Pacific Northwest Island

By Kathleen Alcalá

As friends began “going back to the land” at the same time that a health issue emerged, Kathleen Alcalá set out to reexamine her relationship with food at the most local level. Remembering her parents,...

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,...

Fear No Man

Don James, the '91 Huskies, and the Seven-Year Quest for a National Football Championship

By Mike Gastineau. Foreword by Nick Saban

In 1984 the University of Washington Huskies won every game but one, ranking second in national polls. For most coaches, such a season would be a career pinnacle. But for Don James second place motivated...

The Seattle General Strike

By Robert L. Friedheim. Introduction, Photo Essay, and Afterword by James N. Gregory

“We are undertaking the most tremendous move ever made by LABOR in this country, a move which will lead—NO ONE KNOWS WHERE!” With these words echoing throughout the city, on February 6, 1919, 65,000 Seattle...

Gold Rush Manliness

Race and Gender on the Pacific Slope

By Christopher Herbert

The mid-nineteenth-century gold rushes bring to mind raucous mining camps and slapped-together cities populated by carousing miners, gamblers, and prostitutes. Yet many of the white men who went to the gold fields were products of...