Washington University Books

Mr. Wehr has written another great book about the poets and artists that he has known. He continues where his first book leaves off. This is a collection of bits and pieces about the lives of such people as Mark Tobey, Guy Anderson, Morris Graves, and Elizabeth Bishop. He also has included in this book, more about his own life, and how he went from being a composer to a painter then to a palentologist at the Burke Museum in Seattle. He had plans to write a third book, but, unfortunately, his life was cut short when he died last year or the year before.
In this book, Mr. Wehr discusses the many fossils and stones he found beachcombing. It's a great insight into the Northwest artist community of the fifties, sixties and seventies, as well as an introduction into fossil hunting. I wonder if they are still finding fossil in Republic, Washington? I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in art or beachcombing. It will set your mind dreaming. Can I paint? Can I go to a beach and find fossil sand dollars? I hope that Mr. Wehr left notes for that third book, and that someone will publish it. I want more!

This is an excellent and much needed book on the history of railroad building in the Interior Northwest. Some of the chapters include the various Palouse lines, Stampede Tunnel, Coeur d'Alene area, NP's Central Washington Branch, and more. Well written and researched. A few photos, mostly text. Lengthy appendix. Highly recommended. I hope somebody writes another book on this area continuing on from 1893.

This is a book written by my Grandfather. It is about how while living in Peru, he and his family were taken to an internment camp in the United States during World War II. What I really like about his retelling of this time of his life is that he stays so positive. Everything was taken away from him. Yet, he knows that he can rebuild and live a better life here in America. I am proud of the life he lived. I am thankful that he succeeded here so that I could live in this great nation, too.

Great resource for those with an interest, or who would like to study African-American Art (or as I prefer, American Art from the perspective of an African-American artist).

This is a first rate book that examines and traces the art of northeastern Zaire. Focusing on the Mangbetu people and their art before and after the coming of the european, it is a fascinating examination of traditional styles and designs. Many fine examples of art from this region include, utilitarian objects such as harps, knifes, pots, bowls, various textiles, bark boxes and stools. The color photographs are from The American Museum of Natural History's collection, with the text provided by the museum's curator Enid Schildkrout. I am sorry to see that this book is out-of-stock at present. I would strongly advise anyone wanting an excellent book about art from this region to track it down.

Great book for students, collectors, dealers, art historians and connoiseurs who appreciate Agnes Pelton's wonderous and mysterious paintings. As a buyer of Agnes Pelton paintings, I highly recommend this book. www.LawrenceBeebe.com

This book is filled with ecological, geological and historical information. The work is superbly written to be enjoyed and understood by all readers. The artwork presented within the book is reason enough to own the book. Add to this the fact that you are supporting a great cause and probably gaining information you have never thought about before and you have a real winner. I am still amazed at the way Riki manages to get the names(sometimes in Latin)of all the flora and fauna included in the text while still maintaining the reader's interest.

I grew up in Seattle hearing bits and pieces of the stories of the Japanese Americans who had been rounded up from their homes nearby in the months after Pearl Harbor and sent to inhospitable concentration camps in the interior West, and am always curious for more information. This book, written by a professor of psychology and ethnic studies and a professor of sociology, is, predictably, a scholarly study. This is the first scientific, representative study of the American-born generation who lived through the experience. Time was running out, given the advancing age of the Nisei. So a random study was done in 1997 of 183 current residents of King County, Washington (Seattle) who had been what they call "incarcerated" in the camps. I found this a powerful term to express the injustice of what was done to the Japanese Americans without having to go through diatribes. It got the point across. They chose this location partly because research was already going on, and partly because of the high concentration of Japanese Americans there.

The book follows a chronological order, first describing what prewar life was like, for various age groups, then the act of incarceration, what life was like in the camps, resettlement after the war, and present day life. Two formats are used, first, quotations from the open ended responses people made. These tend to be all too brief; I wanted more. The other is charts and statistics. I've taken statistics classes so am not intimidated by this, but it might feel like a bit much to someone who just wants to know what life was like. But the narrative tells you, and you can let your eyes pass right over the numbers and pay attention to the words.

Among the interesting findings I'll just pick some. Even before the war, a generation gap was looming. The Issei, the immigrant generation, were terribly discriminated against, and thus clustered in "Japantowns." They lived either by farming or in businesses that catered to their own community. Thus, they tended not to learn English. Their children, the Nisei, learned English and American ways in school. They became their parents' interface to the American world. This is probably a universal immigrant experience. But it became even more problematic in the camps, where the structure of life was controlled by the US Army and the parents had little or no control over their children, and the family structure so important to the Japanese started to collapse.

Sixty years later, those who had been the youngest when they entered the camps had the least-negative memories, while those who had been young adults had the worst memories. Young adult women's memories were worse than men's. The book didn't talk about this, but I wondered if it wasn't related to the difficulty of raising young children with minimal resources.

Women who were not married when they entered the camps married two years later, on average, than their age-mates in the population at large--at a time when women were marrying earlier than they had during the depression years. And they had fewer children, spaced farther apart, again at a time when the general birth rate rose.

The Japanese American Issei generation had a low level of education, due to lack of opportunity, and they had high expectations for their children. Their children had high expectations for themselves. Almost half the young men and a quarter of the young women expected to go to college. And they actually exceeded those expectations, though many waited years to fulfill them. The same was true of occupational status. Issei fathers were very limited in the occupations available to them, but their children were ambitious. And as a group, they exceeded their ambitions.

One of the most interesting chapters was on resettlement. It clearly surprised the authors that the incarcerees had so much difficulty reestablishing themselves after the war. Part of this was caused by the government's policy of encouraging them to "spread themselves thin" across the country to be less conspicuous and "more American." Their strong community and church ties were thus destroyed and took years to rebuild in new ways. Before 1945, they were still not allowed to return to the Pacific coast, and some of these people who ended up in the Seattle area moved as many as eight or nine times before landing there. Discrimination made finding jobs very difficult, and many had lost all economic assets.

If you are interested in knowing more on what happened to the Japanese Americans during and after World War II, I would highly recommend this book. If you need to ignore the statistics, do so, but get the gist of the overview of the story. Then look in the long bibliography, or do a Google search, and find one of the many good autobiographies written by someone who lived through it, for an up close and personal view of what it was like. You'll benefit from both vantage points.

The American Library of Congress holds over 110 million items - many of them unique and priceless - and this charts the history of the Library and its holdings, from its initial 740-book collection begun in 1800 to its miles of bookshelves today. Vintage photos and illustrations pack a presentation which is a 'must' for any who would understand American book history.

This is an great book on an amazing building. This building is probably the most famous symbol of democracy and when you see it in person you can't help but feel chills, the way it was sited by Enfant on a slight hilltop with commanding views of the city. This is truly a building that is spectacular both inside and out. This book exhaustively covers the architectural artistry of this famous building and does so in a scholarly manner. The images are nicely produced as well. If you have any interest in American History or just spectacular architecture and artistry then I believe you will be pleased with this book. Well done tribute to an American Icon.