Oregon Books

This is the best PNW plant and animal identification book on the market (and I have lot of such i.d. books). Lots of really good color pictures and detailed b/w's. Informative text on life history/cycles. Good index and well-organized. Great for helping children get going on school projects (the Latin names are there, but the text is plain English, flows well, and provides information that interests ordinary persons of all ages who enjoy the out-of-doors). Would make a nice gift for someone new to the area or otherwise interested in the topic.

I fell in love with wild plants at the tender age of 11 when I went to camp with my 5th grade class. We did plant identification and I became intrigued by all the wonderful plants in the NW. WHen I got home I poured through my mom's copy of this book. I had been seeing it on our coffee table since I was like a tot! I fell in love with plants. This book has beautiful color pics of all kinds of wonderful plants and animals. It's awesome!

Sandine skillfully weaves several personal anecdotes into this narrative of the economic and social history of the Coos Bay region of southwest coastal Oregon. There are brief accounts of his having lived in North Bend, contiguous with Coos Bay, in the early 1950s, with later constrasting descriptions of the present-day distressed region as of early 2002. But the real subject of the book is the bigger picture of the rapid development by distant extractive industries of a west coast lumber port, with its subsequent boom-and-bust economy, and the implications for similar localities seeking job-creating ventures and increased payrolls by attracting remotely-based multinational interests. The author provides a detailed description of how prosperity for this one locality, so dependent on the exploitation and shipping of forest products, was only intermittently sustained. Today, Coos Bay is a city that has yet to come to terms with the implications of its own unstable dependence on short-term "job-creating" ventures.

The book is particularly admirable for its all-encompassing point of view, where the author steps back to visualize the regional socio-economic history of southwest Oregon in the context of the national or global economy. While the tone is somber, the argument is disciplined and suggests a sense of wonder at the severity of the many changes endured by this gritty working community. This reader agrees with the author that the fascinating history of the Coos Bay/North Bend area presents a rich vein for historians and economists.

This is a thoughtful and compelling local history that should have a broad appeal, even for those with an interest in labour and industry studies, or in the forest resources of the Pacific Northwest. It particularizes the geography of industrial work, and serves as a timely warning that industrial location is seldom permanent and is always subject to downsizing. Indeed, in resource extraction industries, plant shutdowns are likely eventualities for all localities embraced by corporate globalization. In fact, one of the more interesting themes in Sandine's study is that in a retrospective sense every one of the major players in Coos Bay's history--from shrewd and calculating pioneer lumber and shipping merchants such as Asa Mead Simpson to multinational lumber product enterprises such as Georgia-Pacific--were always conceptualizing their immediate future in hemispheric or global terms while acquiring and managing what was originally a public domain as a resource to be privately abused. Yet at the local level there was seldom any effort to understand the long-term implications of this form of transnational capitalism.

In its final chapters the book considers the historic absence of local interest group linkage and the deference and unassertiveness on the part of local development councils. It mentions occasional efforts at joint forest management, and a few of the largely ineffective campaigns to ameliorate the social impacts of structural changes in the industry. As Sandine relates, only recently has there been a real awareness that "world trade" on the local level simply means "the foreclosure of economic choice." The text is well-served by photos, bibliographical footnotes (many revealing sources that are unusual and reflect the author's ample range of background reading), an extensive bibliography, and a useful index.

Plundertown was my summer vacation book, and should be on everyone's wish list, especially those concerned about the environment, globalization, West Coast history, and a tale that has the dark drama of a well-written expose. The author has skillfully woven personal, political, socio-cultural, historical, and economic threads into a very engaging, compact narrative that starts with vividly recallled childhood memories of growing up in Coos Bay, then takes the reader on a wide-ranging epic journey that expands out to San Francisco and other urban centers of industry and finance, back in time when native peoples lived in harmony with nature and the forest, and forward to the time when nature had been exploited by buisness barons, and left barren for future generations. Chapters are short, densely packed with well-researched information, and provide a vivid and convincing saga of the human and environmental wounds that occur when business colonizes and exploits for economic gain. Because the tale is very local and personally felt by the author, the reader is able to live through a sequence of events that is being repeated in our time, in many parts of the world. The costs of globalization and economic exploitation become very real, not just abstract political rhetoric.
Highly recommended.

It's a wonderful book and it's so well organized I can't believe it... delighted that my May Day toast is part of it. Gary Snyder

Portland's lively left-of-center history is brought back to life in 'Red Guide'
The Oregonian
June 17, 2007

By John Terry




Interesting, the things found in the closets of Portland's radical past:

The founder of the exclusive Catlin Gabel School was accused of being a communist.

Two Tuskegee Airmen of World War II fame were from Portland; 12 in all were from Oregon.

The principal of Kenton Elementary School allied herself with social reformer Jane Addams, played host to muckraker Upton Sinclair and hobnobbed with Eleanor Roosevelt at the White House.

All this and much more thanks to the closet-cleaning work of intrepid Portland radical Michael Munk, whose new book, "The Portland Red Guide, Sites and Stories of our Radical Past," is new from Portland State University's Ooligan Press.

Munk is a native of Prague, Czechoslovakia, whose family fled the Nazis and came to Portland in 1939. He's a graduate of Lincoln High School and Reed College, has a master's degree from the University of Oregon and doctorate from New York University. For 25 years Munk taught political science at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, Chicago's Roosevelt University and Rutgers before retiring in Portland.

Munk -- Internet moniker "lastmarx" -- freely admits he's about as far to the political left as one can get without straying into the lunatic fringe. He's also an engaging personality with a delicious sense of irony evident throughout "Red Guide."

The book is divided into six political eras from the 19th century to the present, each entry in each section numbered and cross-referenced to maps and photographs.

Here is where radical writer John Reed grew up unfettered by Portland's upper-upper crust. There is where the Marine Workers Industrial Union headquartered during the 1934 Maritime Strike. Here is where Dr. Marie Equi in 1918 railed against war and was rewarded with three years in San Quentin.

Much of Munk's material understandably deals with the social, labor and political conflicts that roiled local waters throughout the city's history, events old-guard conservatives would just as soon see black-lined from its history. It also memorializes many who added richly to the city's fabric and heritage -- racial minorities, social reformers, religious leaders.

Ruth Catlin opened Miss Catlin's School for Girls in 1911 on Northwest Irving Street. She dedicated it to the "independence and freedom of action for women" and drew students "largely from Portland's wealthy elite," Munk says. She turned the school over to a board of directors in 1928 to become Catlin Gabel School.

The late 1930s found her on the infamous Portland Police Red Squad's list of communist sympathizers because she was active in a group "devoted to defending the elected Spanish government against a fascist invasion," says Munk.

Brothers Robert (Ruby) and Carl Deiz, graduates of Franklin High School, were Portland's contribution to the Tuskegee Airmen. Robert flew 93 missions with the segregated 332nd Fighter Group in Europe and was featured on a 1943 War Bond poster, "one of few depicting a black person," Munk says. Another Tuskegee airman, Charles Duke, was the first African American member of the Portland Police Department.

Grace De Graff, Kenton Elementary principal, was among the founders of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, organized to urge women worldwide to "refuse to do the work men cannot do because they are busy murdering other men."

Munk quotes a De Graff niece as recalling her thinking "what the Russians were doing was a desirable state of affairs," but also "Aaron Frank (of the department store Meier & Frank) was the nicest man" for helping out needy Kenton families.

You can reach John Terry, a retired copy editor for The Oregonian and member of the Oregon Geographic Names Board, at terryjohnf@cs.com

the book sent to be was new and it was a teacher's edition so i had all the answers to the questions and the steps outlined

This book is an excellent companion for basic review of algebra concepts. Young people may find it useful, but older adults will also find it useful for a good review if returning to school. This book goes over the basic algebra concepts. It gets more difficult in the future with other books, but if you are looking to review the concepts, you won't go wrong here. Best if used in a basic algebra review course. Good luck

It is funny and it is as well written as any mystery I have read. If he keeps this up he will join an elite group of top writers such as Parker, Woods, Hillerman. Dudley Hafner

It's one of truisms of the newspaper business that every reporter has an unfinished novel sitting in his bottom desk drawer. Fortunately for lovers of good storytelling, the late Vince Kohler finished his--and three more besides. "Rainy North Woods" is the introductory volume in his series of Eldon Larkin mysteries.

Eldon Larkin isn't your typical mystery novel hero. He's a reporter for a small daily newspaper on the Oregon Coast, "The South Coast Sun," and he dreams more about finding a girlfriend and a car he can rely on than unraveling a big mystery. But when you have a circus elephant stomping a hapless Vietnamese immigrant to death, sightings of Bigfoot and UFOs, and an old-timer of an editor obsessed with "good copy!" what's a reporter going to do? Call the Enquirer? Not on your life!

This is literate, witty, humorous story-telling at its best, capturing the true flavor of the craziness that often seeps into these "Rainy North Woods." I'm grateful Vince Kohler gave us this wonderful book, and three more...and just sorry he left us too soon.

Look up a copy. You won't be disappointed!

This entire book is online at http://www.winfinity.com/beachwalla/rebels/rebels.htm

Check it out!

This classic book in labor history combines the highest level of historical research with riveting story-telling. It is dramatic, poetic, honest - and indispensable in understanding the wild history of the I.W.W. in the Pacific Northwest.

The entire text is available free online at ...

This classic book in labor history combines the highest level of historical research with riveting story-telling. It is dramatic, poetic, honest — and indispensable in understanding the wild history of the I.W.W. in the Pacific Northwest.

Detailed and thorough, full of entertaining anecdotes andtranscriptions of correspondence; covers major political figures aswell as tribespeople.

This book was wonderful. I love hearing about the history of my tribe (Siletz). Also, the author included information about my great-great-great grandfather Charlie Depoe. I learned about my own family from this book. I cried to see a picture of my ancestor for the first time ever. I thank you E.A. Schwartz for putting together such a comprehensive piece of what is essentially a very important, yet small piece of history for many American Indians. I waited patiently for years for this story to be told. Now I can pass this piece of history on to my children and all of their children. Thank you.

We read Roughing It on the Oregon Trail by Diane Stanley. 2 twins stay with their grandmother and get to go back in time to meet some relatives and travel on the Oregon Trail. A little along the lines as the Magic Tree House books but this one is a picture book. It really was very interesting and I even learned some things I did not know. Recommended for ages 5-10 years.

My 6 yr old son and 8 year old daughter paid close attention and enjoyed this book. My daughter enjoyed reading the bubble conversation; I read the text part. Nice illustrations - neither they nor the story was too dark as is sometimes a problem with historical fiction for this age. Sort of a Magic School Bus feel to it, with travel back in time.

It has been a long while since I followed up on my childhood obsession with pioneer stories, but while reading this I was back in the covered wagon facing the hardships: massacres, thirst, insects, snakes, wayward and stubborn pack animals, terrain that seemed more like a blockade than a "trail." The Beards were an indomitable pair who travelled the route from their home on the West Coast (the end of the Oregon Trail) to its origin in Independence, MO. And they did it after 40 years of a marriage during which they had dreamed and planned for this near-pilgrimmage. It isn't just the great descriptions of the land and people they encountered along the way, but their awe and reverence. I don't think that "respect" is a bad way to put it: the reader here is in the presence of a mensch (if one can get away with calling a Presbyterian minister that). I saw every landmark filtered through the clear light of Beard's mind, philosophy and sensitivity.

This book is indeed a classic. Beard's conversational narratives and word pictures are a fast read with unparalleled clarity and excitement. A student of Western history, Beard adds numerous, historical accounts of other writers and conversations with locals met along the way that either lived or knew about the "old days." Hardship and triumph defined the Oregon Trail in the mid-19th century, and the Beards tasted both. Who better to appreciate these extremes than a Chaplain assigned to a U.S. Army unit in France during World War One and the long-time pastor of Mount Tabor Presbyterian Church in Portland, Oregon. Ride with the Beards through rivers, deserts, mountains and plains sprinkled with sunshine, rain, snow, sleet, wind and sand storms. The Beards were friends of three generations of my family. The last time I saw them was in 1947, the year before they took their saddles East. Readers will not be disappointed with this riveting, first-hand account of a trip first dreamed of when Chaplain Beard was a boy.

This book may be listed as a 9-12 year old read, but that doesn't begin to do this book proper justice! I read it by myself with the intent of going back and reading it with my 11 year old daughter. I enjoyed it so much that it will be a family read instead as all 5 of my children ages 3-11 will love getting to know Sarah, Uncle Joe, Junior, Miss Rose, Aunt Becky and Eric. Susan Page Davis takes us inside Sarah's world - a 14 year old girl who is suddenly left all alone after a tragic accident takes her mom away from her and her dad died 8 years previously. Uncle Joe, a quiet, solitary bachelor takes her in on his horse farm which allows her to keep her horse and her mom's horse. As they settle into a routine, Uncle Joe finally agrees to ride with Sarah in the Bandicoot 100, which her mom had previously registered to do with Sarah. This leads us inside the world of distance horse racing which turned out to be fascinating! This is Sarah's first time to do a 100 (100 miles in under 24 hours) though she and her mother had completed a 50 mile race shortly before her mom passed away.

God's provision is the phrase that kept coming to mind as I read this book, God's provision for Sarah (and Uncle Joe) even when they didn't know what they needed.

This was just a really great book and I can't wait to see what Susan brings us in the next installment of The Piper Ranch Series!

Review:
I was pleasantly surprised that this was not your typical story about a girl who becomes an orphan; is left with adults who do horrible things to that orphan. Quite the opposite is true in this book. Sarah is the orphan who loses her mom unexpectedly two weeks before "The Bandicoot 100" in Oregon. That is the competition that Sarah and her mom were registered to compete in together.

After Sarah's mom dies she isn't sure how her uncle really feels about her and why he wanted her to live with him in the first place. But as the story unfolds you see both Sarah and her Uncle live and breathe horses and God. That is their connection. It was difficult for them at first to work out new routines for their lives and learn about one another. It was fascinating how both Sarah and Uncle Joe planned their days around caring for the many horses on the Piper Ranch. They also had to work out how they could find time to train the horses for the competition and do the normal chores.

Sarah's faith is tested and she learns to press into her faith in God her father. She takes comfort in scripture one night (Isaiah 65:24) "And it shall come to pass, that before they call, I will answer, and while they are yet speaking, I will hear."

Sarah's prayer that night is "Thank you for answering my prayer, Father;" she whispers "You gave me everything I needed, even when I was too hurt to know what that was...Thanks especially for Uncle Joe. You know we needed each other."

I was amazed at all the checks and balances that were planned within the Bandicoot 100 competition. Everyone wants to make sure that the horses and humans do not get hurt or abused during the race. Susan does a great job about taking you inside the world of horse competition and horse care. It was very interesting to read.

This is a story of faith, hope and love as you get to know Sarah and Uncle Joe. See their struggle to get to know each other and become a family unit. This story will grab your heart strings. You don't have to be a horse lover to enjoy this story. I highly recommend this book for everyone to read.

Nora St.Laurent
Book Club Servant Leader
Novel Journey Reviewer