Oregon Books

This book not only tells how and where to find books, but gives a great description of the many interests of the coast!!!

No one else has covered these little shops about the coast. He delightfully comments on the owners and the type of books you will find. Nice to have on the shelf for a book owner and shopper.

I have two copies of this book.

It opened my eyes to things I had never seen wandering the Coastal Range and Cascade Mountains of Oregon and SW Washington.

This field guide is well organized with beautiful photos. Each butterfly listed has a key for recognition, variations, life history as well as habitat range and the time of year you are likely to see this butterfly on the wing. A particularly nice feature is is the list of names for each as butterflies often have akas (also known as.)Dr. Pyles broad knowledge of nature allows him to include additional information about the history of butterfly study. This book will supplant other field guides whose scope intends to include the entire continent. The beautiful durable cover will look good on your desk and will function well in your field pack.
The tremendous amount of data collected in these pages reflect a dedication to the study of butterflies that is inspiring to the amateur and professional naturalist.

Whether you are a climber, a hiker, a car traveler, or just an armchair explorer, the Beckey guides are the indispensible resources for your mountain experience. The three volumes are filled with information about the natural and human history of the Washington Cascades, as well as complete route and access data for every significant summit. The photos alone are reason enough to own these books. If you are interested in really "knowing" the Washington Cascades, you MUST have them in your library. Highest possible recommendation.

I have used this Guidebook so many times in the past 12 years that I've had to purchase it three times. The definitive section on the Picket Range alone is worth the price of the book.

For those who want to experience the North Cascades as they were in the 30's and 40's, reading the "Trails and Alpine Hiking Approaches" section will steer you in the right direction. This book is rife with golden kernels of information found nowhere else. Any serious climber should have all three of the Cascade Alpine Guide books.

Mike Quinn

This Book is of unusual interest to me because forty and more years ago I did a lot of surveying in the mythical State of Jefferson. North of the 42nd parallel I had to live with the work described by Kay Atwood.

The political environment surrounding this initial survey work on the Willamette Meridian was news to me. I must say that the Surveyors General for the Oregon Territory met these challenges much better than the General Land Office south of the 42nd parallel some 20 and more years later.

I would have been interested in some of the details of the surveying at that time. Atwood describes the sun compass used by these original surveyors and has an illustration of a magnetic compass. How were the two instruments utilized during periods of rain and overcast? How did Butler Ives know when he reached the 42nd parallel, the territorial boundary?

As part of the story of the original land survey, Atwood includes considerable local history. For me, this was a most enjoyable read.

Chaining Oregon: Surveying the Public Lands of the Pacific Northwest, 1851-1855 is a scholarly, in-depth history of the early federal surveyors of the Pacific Northwest, who labored for the US General Land Office between 1851 and 1855, and the impact their work had on America's overall work to settle the valleys and mountains of what would eventually become the states of Oregon and Washington. A handful of black-and-white images, including reproductions of early surveyor maps, enhance this amazing look into the lives and struggles of these unsung pioneers. Highly recommended, especially for college library American History shelves.

Mr. Jackson did excellent research for this book. I have numerous ancestors mentioned in the book and even had a picture of one that I had never seen before. Anyone interested in the history of the Western Mt, Idaho and Eastern WA area, will need to read this book. I hope that the Author publishes more material from his research.

From the book, I found out that the Metis of the Pacific Northwest formed many communities in that area. My great-grandparents were born in Walla Walla, WA. and we were told that they were French- Canadian and "Black Irish". I read that in Walla Walla, is where they founded communities and that they hid there ancestry and called themselves French-Canadian. So, on reading this, I found out that the missing part to my full heritage was actually a mixture of French and Native American Indian. I owe a great gratitude to Mr. Jackson. Thank-you!!! Sean

I purchased this book just after it went on sale and I can tell you that it is very informative and very well thought out. I do not live in Bend, but am planning on a visit there in the near future. After reading Mrs. McCage's book, I will not have to ask anyone where to find places to visit. It appears she is very knowledgeable in her research concerning the book and she also has an adorable son that accompanied her on this project. Thank you Amazon for supplying this material. Mr. David Trail, Lewisville, Tx

This is a book for people who are worried about traveling or settling in Bend, Oregon, with kids. Fear no more. McCage has collected information about enough child-friendly activities in Bend to keep any family happy. This handsome and appropriately priced small volume has advice on the outdoors, arts and education, entertainment, and annual events, as well as offering tips on kid-approved dining and snacking. It also features black and white photographs of the area as well as cute pictures of her young son Joseph enjoying ice cream and playing in the Sun Mountain Fun Center.

An excellent and must have reference book, clement greenberg's selection of artists are important to all of the kinds of art that came about in the 20th century

This is a very beautiful book, showing many wonderful works of art, but only a relatively small number of them have achieved the recognition they deserve. Greenberg was always controversial during his lifetime. He lived to see the widespread acceptance in the 1950s of his endorsements during the '40s of Pollock and the rest of abstract expressionism, but his admiration for the color-field painters of the '60s was always a minority taste, with many more artlovers during that period favoring pop art and its ramifications--op, kinetic art, minimal, etc. (I say this upon the basis of having covered the art scene for Time magazine in the '60s, having continued to write about art since, and having come to the conclusion since receiving my doctorate in art history that pop was essentially a reaction back against abstract expressionism, while color-field painting and the modernist abstraction which carries on its tradition in the present are the true continuance of the avant-garde.) Since the '60s, the greater popularity of the descendants of pop & its ramifications has made it increasingly difficult for the art that Greenberg admired to receive the recognition it deserves, especially the art made by the younger artists, but majority taste has been wrong many times in the past, and this is particularly true in the present, when critical judgments in general are so often considered less important than how well a work of art is doing in the marketplace. I like to think this situation will improve in the future, but in the meantime, the reader will be able to see in this book what really good & truly avant-garde art looks like.

I had such a good time reading this book. The tales remind me so very much of a former pastor of mine. It was a delight!

Very easy to read short stories from an ordained pastor, who has experience of many years of teaching as well as out in the field missionary work. His story telling is unparalleled, funny but always with a solid Christian based message.

I have personally known Dr. Gordy for a number of years and have had the blessing of receiving his powerful preaching and seeing his positive witness in Christian service. You can be sure,the stories he tells in this book, as humerous and unbelieveable as they sound, are true.

This is a wonderful book. Here's what Booklist said in a starred review.

An ace at the new weirdness defined by the anthology Feeling Very Strange (2006), What uses it to be creepy, polemical, and funny, all at once or in various blendings. These 17 stories progress from grim to laugh-out-loud ludicrous without ever derogating their common subject, love, though they do depict it as fairly insane. The opening stories, "Finger Talk" and "Babies," feature women in abusive relationships they don't want to change; that one is trapped in a gorilla suit and the other is, unbeknownst to hubby, carrying sextuplets leavens their dire circumstances some, but enough? "The Cost of Doing Business" is about a professional victim, whose clients must be able to afford her subsequent hospitalizations and quite adequate comfort between jobs. Things lighten up through the predicaments of a man who masturbated for science when 18 and at 49 discovers he has thousands of offspring, a man who realizes that work doesn't proliferate during vacation without cause, a nauseating senior who expects familial love although he intends to live forever, and others, until at last there is the hermit researcher's tale, from which we learn, through a vale of our own tears of laughter, why there are always hermits. Love is why, of course. Crazy!

Ray Olson ~ Booklist starred review

A "slim volume," Kate Wilhelm calls this in the introduction, but you could have fooled me. Its 195 pages are packed with stories that range from touching to unsettling, haunting to quirky; seventeen stories that keep you not only entertained, but thinking. What's narratives drive ahead, make you continue to read and guess. They are disturbing, funny, and very very brave.

This is actually two writings in one.
The first, "A Day with the Cow Column", is an abbreviated but classical description of a typical day along the emigrant trail with cattle in 1843, by Jesse Applegate. A must read for insight into trail life.
The second writing is a reminesce by Jesse's nephew Jesse A. Applegate some sixty plus years later. Young Jesse was only six and a half years old when undertaking this 1843 pilgrimage and his recollections are persuasive and touching. He recalls such occurrences as to geographical places they visited; descriptions and experiences with Indians; "buffalo chip" collecting; dogs chasing antelope; river fordings; crossing the prairies and sage plains; buffalo; games and mischief of young boys; etc.
Also included are his recollections of the perilous floating of the Columbia River where he lost a brother and cousin to drownings; the first year in Oregon with frugal provisions; the blazing of the Applegate Cutoff to allow emigrants a more efficient means of entering Oregon; etc.
An absorbing read.

This book is a personal reminiscence of the first organized wagon train to follow the Oregon Trail. The author recalls his experiences as a young boy in 1843, traveling west with his family. I found this to be extremely informative and filled with personal anecdotes. Jesse Applegate's story is told from a boy's perspective and is wonderfully expressive. You will read about adventures and activities that usually don't make it into standard histories. Most memorable was the evocation of the hardship and suffering of these early pioneers. When these people reached the Oregon Territory there were no stores - they lived hand-to-mouth for a long time. But I also found Jesse's happy memories of his interaction with Native Peoples to be very enlightening, again from a boy's perspective as he explored the nearby woods and hills. All in all, a wonderful account, full of surprising and unique memories and events.