Washington Books

From 1955 to 1957, Boise, Idaho, was caught in the grip of a full-blown Gay panic that made national headlines and gave Idaho's judicial system a black eye. This study of the panic, published in 1965, is both of its time and decades ahead of it. Gerassi brilliantly dissects the (chiefly economic) motives of people involved in promoting and prosecuting the scandal. He also displays a sharp eye for character and incidental detail.

A must-read for anyone interested in GLBT history, and also a classic piece of investigative journalism, Gerassi's book is an astonishing piece of work. (Neil Miller covers a similar scandal in Sioux City, IA, with the somewhat inferior _Sex Crime Panic_.)

The Boys of Boise is one of those books that anyone interested in understanding the issues besetting those living an alternative lifestyle must read.

John Gerassi writes an editorial history of a series of politically motivated arrests and harrassments of those in the homosexual community in Boise, Idaho in 1955. Gerassi writes from a mid-1960s perspective in the midst of the sexual revolution looking back on a different perspective when homosexuality was even less accepted than it was in the 1960s.

The book explores several issues as they impacted a prosecution of a given portion of the homosexual population: community politics, the input and influence of a religous community (in Boise - the LDS), the role of the popular local press, a grab for power by those outside the main community power structure, the role of law enforcement and the courts.

Why is this book a must read for understanding issues facing those living alternative lifestyles today? The events covered could happen in any community today - to those who are exploring poly relationships, BDSM, and Gor - as well as to those who continue to simply live within the Gay community. There are laws on our books in each state and locale that could be discriminatively enforced to bring problems to individuals or groups - in violation of protections they believe they have under the Bill of Rights.

The only possible negative in the book - and for some it is not a negative - is the amount of space devoted to reproducing the entirety of court dialogs and certain other primary sources. While I personally enjoyed having the sources there - other historians would prefer they be relegated to either appendices or simply referenced and summarized. It should be noted that when Gerassi wrote this book - he was a reporter/editor for a news periodical rather than a university professor.

The book definitely belongs in the library of scholars devoted to Urban studies, gay studies, the sociology of alternative lifestyles and the like.

If you enjoy skillfully-crafted character studies, this is the perfect book for you. You will fall in love with the town and people depicted in this excellent read. My only disappointment with this book was that it ended. I found myself missing the characters and wishing I had lived then and could have known them in person. My daughter actually introduced me to the book when it was on her required reading list for an English class when she was in high school. It is a book worth having in your collection to read over and over again every few years. When you read it again, it's like meeting up with an old friend who you haven't seen in years, but can converse with like you had never been apart.

Captivating book that grabs you on the first page and doesn't let you go! Realistic tales of love and loss that hit close to home. Wonderful when read with her autobiographical collection of essays "Chain of Hands".

I read this book over 45 years ago while completing my undergraduate studies in Engineering. I have never forgotten it!! The significant substories within the book describe the development of wire rope; the construction of the first successful suspension bridge across the Niagara Gorge; the details of construction of the Brooklyn Bridge; and the comparison of the sway bracing of the Brooklyn Bridge and the Tacoma Narrows Bridge and its ultimate fate. These could all have been the subject of separate books and each was facinating in itself.

This fascinating book descibes the the story of the brooklyn bridge in New York, and the story of their builders, the roebling brothers. Roebling had the great idea of building a bridge not with stiff beams, but with two big soft ropes made of fibers of strong and elastic steel. An idea, which now is used with nearly all Bridges of wide span. I love this book, because it is not an engineering report, but the touching story of the life of mainly the elder Roebling brother, who dedicated his health and his life to this bridge.

I could read this book nearly 40 years ago, and still it is one of my favorites. I do not posess it, and I deeply regret that it is not available any more. Hopefully AMAZON can find some and put them on their stock...

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.

I like reading the book. This book contain all basic information about the Hmong culture. I highly recommended all Hmong and nonHmong who are interesting about Hmong culture to read this book. The author Patricia Symonds have come to understand and experience the Hmong Culture well.

I came to this book after reading several recent ethnographies, and went on to more. This book stood out as a high peak between the others. Symonds actually tells, in wonderful detail, how the White Hmong of north Thailand are born, negotiate life, and finally die and receive burial. She presents the Hmong through their own words--both individual stories and sacred texts. One high point of the book is the material on childbirth--hard to study in the field, and rarely reported. Another high point is the text and translation of the entire White Hmong burial chant, which is the most sacred of texts and includes the Hmong cosmology. A sustained, striking poem, it must be darkly powerful and chillingly beautiful when shamans chant it over the deceased.
One virtue of this ethnography is that it complements existing (mostly male-written) Hmong ethnographies by presenting a female-centered view; White Hmong society is quite gender-separate, and a male ethnographer would not have had the insights into birth and its rituals.
Symonds tells us enough about herself to allow us to understand her situation, but is not obtrusively "reflexive." She contexts the Hmong in Thai politics, but never loses her focus on the Hmong. (This in contrast to some recent ethnographies I have read, in which anthropologists blow their own expertise--ethnography--and try with conspicuous lack of success to be political scientists instead.) She tells us what she thinks is happening, thus fulfilling anthropological responsibilities, but does not bury her material under floods of speculative "interpretation," again in contrast to some recent works I have had to read. Like Nicholas Tapp (oft cited herein), she actually lets the Hmong speak and act, and thus we have the enormous benefit of their words, views, and deeds. This is an extremely valuable corrective to the mere-victim or mere-backdrop status that the Hmong, like other minority peoples, have had in so much of the literature. The Hmong experience, like all human experience, is precious to us all, and this book presents an impressive amount of it. I hope young ethnographers will read and learn.

This book is fantastic! It covers Carnival celebrations from all over the world. The history is detailed but not dull, and the pictures are vibrant and lively. I recommend this book to anyone that has been to (or wants to attend) a Carnival celebration and anyone that is interested in the stories/histories of the celebrations.

In the forward to the vibrant, sumptuous and well-researched ¡Carnival!, Joyce Ice, Director of the Museum of International Folk Art (MOIFA), notes that festivals "as cultural phenomena never fail to intrigue and captivate us as human beings, whether we are casual observers, researchers, or participants." Edited by Barbara Mauldin, curator of Latin American folk art at MOIFA, ¡Carnival! does indeed intrigue and captivate as we are plunged-through essays, photographs and illustrations-into the fascinating and diverse celebration of this important and lively Christian festival. ¡Carnival! focuses on communities in Spain, Mexico, Switzerland, Haiti, Bulgaria, Italy, the United States, Bolivia, Brazil, Trinidad and Tobago. A varied and highly-qualified stable of historians, folklorists, anthropologists, linguists and curators offer well-researched and insightful essays that demonstrate how one festival could evolve into wonderfully diverse (yet similar) pre-Lenten celebrations. Colorful photographs and illustrations capture the sizzle and sass of the parades and costumes that take center stage in each of the cultures represented in this book. ¡Carnival! was almost a decade in the making and it shows. Meticulous yet soulful, scholarly yet enchanting, ¡Carnival! delights and amazes as much as it reminds us of the astonishing diversity of the world's cultures. [The full review first appeared in Southwest BookViews.]

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 short, highly readable book outlines the steps that led to the passage of Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal in America. Few cases have had the impact on society this one has had. Proponents hail its passage as a "victory for women's rights." Opponents say it has ushered in a Holocaust that dwarfs anything done Nazi death camps. Almost everyone has a strong opinion. No one is neutral.

Stevens begins by ridiculing the crusade led by Anthony Comstock of Connecticut and the Roman Catholic Church to rid America of vice in the late 18 and 1900's, which included information on birth control. He then praises early women's rights advocate Margaret Sanger's efforts in fighting them. He then reviews Texas Attorney Sarah Weddington's efforts in preparing her case for legalizing abortion to the Supreme Court. Particularly interesting is her search for a typical victim to use in her class action suit that led her to Norma McCorvey aka, Jane Roe. He then spends a great deal of time enumerating the, sometimes violent, efforts of pro-life supporters to end abortion and hails the punitive damages awarded "victims" of their protests. He ends by proposing a truce between reasonable people on both sides of the issue to work together to make abortion rare while protecting the legal sanctity of "a woman's right to choose."

Only 175 short pages in length, this book should be read by people on both sides of the issue. Stevens is a gifted writer who presents the issues well. Readers will be much better informed after spending two hours or so reading this work.

Few people are neutral on abortion. The author is not; neither is this reviewer. The fact remains; every time an abortion is performed a child dies. Dehumanizing terms such as, "fetus," "product of conception," "fetal tissue," etc. doesn't change that. As a pro-lifer, I totally reject the proposed compromise the author suggests designed to make abortion safe, legal and rare. Forty-three to forty-five million abortions have been performed since Roe v. Wade. Abortion is therefore, safe, and, thanks to Roe v. Wade, legal. But it is anything but rare. I pledge to use the information in this work in my efforts to eliminate this scourge on our nation's history and honor. Interestingly enough, Norma McCorvey, aka, Jane Roe, now supports our efforts as well.

This book disspelled many of the common misconceptions surrounding this case. I really enjoyed reading the book and liked the way the entire background, as it pertained to this landmark case, was thoroughly explained.

Living in the NW with roads and highways criss-crossing most stretches of the Cascades it's almost hard to imagine that not so long ago all of that was remote and climbing back up in there meant long multi-week treks from road to road, bagging peaks along the way.
Beckey and company enjoyed these peaks in the best possible way, back in the day day when one climbed in boots or tennis shoes, protected rarely and then with pitons or more likely a slung horn or chockstone, and where the route was what you made it not what you find on-line or in a book. Most of these peaks aren't terribly technical, and modern ascents always have something of the anti-climatic feel to them. There are epic moments here and there when things go south, but by and large it's dull sort of adventure. Better to have done it back then with less hardware, more pluck, and the frequent use of one's younger brother for shoulder stands.
This book along with Exum's collection of climbing stories are probably the two most important records of the pre-yosemite generation of climbers. It's invaluable record American alpine climbing in it's infancy, and it's funny.

When my grandfather died and we were going through his books I came across this gem. Beckey has first ascents on more than half of all the peaks in the Cascades. He owns the mountains. This is his poem to his love. I had long valued Fred Beckey's extensive guide books to the Cascades, but had never read any of mountain narratives. What a treat this was! I also highly recommend his book on McKinley.

I've read scores of mountaineering books, but this one I rank as one of the very best. Beckey tromps across the mountains of Washington state as a young man in the early days of mountaineering with joie de vivre. In one exuberant push he and a companion set out to hike and bag whatever peaks in between from what is now I-90 to Highway 2. A week later they emerged on the highway and hitched back to Seattle.

I hope you find as much pleasure in this overlooked classic as I have.

Proves that some kinds of advice are timeless. If you are reading a historical review of the man's life, you should read his own words too.

This is a collection of BTW's Sunday sermons to his Tuskegee students. Originally published in 1902, the lessons on thrift, clean living, sharing what you learn with others, the need to read, and the value of education of the heart as well as the head are still valuable a century later. Does not date too badly and with so many young people growing up today without this kind of advice in the home, it's needed just as much today.

Many uninformed people dismiss BTW as an "Uncle Tom," but the publication of more of his writings like this will show that in spite of any faults, he was a very useful person in the upliftment of people. Read it and see.