Pacific University Books

As Siskel and Ebert would have said, 2 thumbs up. It's a great book to learn about the "shores" of Alaska. WTG Dr.Mason

2 thumbs up....... A book worth it's wait in gold, its a must for readers who want to learn the truth about the "shores" of Alaska.........WTG Dr. Mason

2 thumbs up....... A book worth its wait in gold, its a must for readers who want to learn the truth about the "shores" of Alaska.........

Commuting by ferry I always have a few books with me to fill the time either on the crossing or in the line of cars. This is a great book for just that, since it's full of interesting facts and it can be picked up and browsed at just about any place within it. It has lots of interesting graphs, illustrations and photos and has more information than any casual nature lover could require.

Very detailed, scholarly work, description of landforms, geology, soils, climate, vegetation, habitats, animal life, marine life, water resources. Overview of Indian tribes. Bibliography for all subjects is probably 200-300 references. Kruckeburg is Prof. of Botany at University of Washington.

Whenever I have a question about plants, animals, geology, weather, tides, or history of the Puget Sound region, this well-organized book is the place I start. Kruckeberg is amazingly comprehensive and knowledgeable. The book is superbly illustrated, though in black and white. The writing is clear. While a new edition would be welcome, this classic remains timeless.

This is a much more thorough study of Congregational culture and doctrine than that of Perry Miller. Miller's work relied entirely on published weekday sermons. Stout mined the unpublished sermon notes of hundreds of New England preachers to find a balance that Miller missed. Stout convincingly shows that the ministers' commitment to the salvation of their listeners was always paramount, and finds a consistency in their messages that link the ministers of the 1630's with those of the 1770's. Stout finds few doctrinal differences between Old Lights such as John Cotton and New Lights such as Jonathan Edwards. It's a tough read (being intellectual history), but it's well worth the effort if you wish to get inside the Puritan mind.

Harry S. Stout (Ph.D., Kent State University) is currently a professor of American religious history at Yale University. Building on the groundbreaking work of Perry Miller, Stout published The New England Soul in 1986. The study is more extensive than its paperback size might suggest. The main body of the work covers nearly 150,000 words and is supplemented by 68 pages of extensive end notes. The work has become a standard text for college and graduate courses in colonial American history.

Stout's work centers on the content, role, and power of the sermon in Puritan (later New England) America from the first landings to the beginning of the American revolution. His thesis, which is strongly supported through the work, is that the sermon was the central agent in creating a cohesive culture that evolves toward eventual self-identity and independence. Drawing extensively on primary sources, Stout brings to the contemporary reader the piety and passions of the people whose culture forms the soil for the American nation.

Stout follows the sermon through five generations of New England preachers. These generations are marked by gradual but significant changes in the style and, to some degree, content of the sermon. These five generations he labels invention (1620-1665), arrangement (1666-1700), style (1701-1730), delivery (1731-1763), and memory (1764-1776).

These five stages are, he admits, not dramatic shifts as much as a continual evolution. Through these stages Stout demonstrates changes in style (from plain to "Anglican") and, to some degree, in content. He asserts, however, that the essential core elements of the sermon remain consistent, and that the changes reflect the sermon's adjustment to a changing environment. In this assertion Stout challenges to common suggestion that Puritan preaching displaced its original mission and passion over time.

The themes of personal piety and liberty, Stout demonstrates, are constant from the early sermons of John Cotton to sermons like that of Samuel West celebrating the liberation of Boston by George Washington in 1776. These themes are linked by a shared sense of cultural and religious destiny, the "city set on a hill" mission, in which American New England would fulfill the goal of Calvin's Geneva to create the perfect society in which the Kingdom of God might be fully realized on earth.

The New England preacher, more so than the statesman or soldier, was the preeminent power and power-broker in the Colonial period. The sermon was both soteriological and political, reflecting a conceptual marriage of church and state difficult for the contemporary reader to fully grasp.

One great value of Stout's work is, following in the steps of Perry Miller, he brings to the reader the words of voices long forgotten. While John Cotton, Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, and a handful of other divines have remained well known figures, at least to students of early American history, Stout brings to life the words of dozens of other preachers whose works and words are now preserved only in small numbers of rare books and pamphlets.

Stout effectively demonstrates how the sermons, especially of the eighteenth century, laid the foundation for the revolution and the birth of the American nation. The "messianic mission" of the early Puritans was malleable enough to be transfigured into the great battle, against the Beast of the British monarchy, to establish the independence of the colonies. Any student of American or religious history would be well served by including Stout's work in their must-read list. Any teacher of early American history should seriously consider adding this to any list of recommended texts. The contemporary student will be surprised at the multiple connections between religious and political thinking in early American life, as well as the pivotal role the sermon plays in the development of that life.

This is a great book by a brilliant historian who is deeply revered on both sides of the Atlantic. It will be the definitive work. Christopher Catherwood, author of CHRISTIANS, MUSLIMS AND ISLAMIC RAGE (Zondervan, 2003)

Own this book if you love to take road trips in Oregon. Take it with you everywhere, because there is so much to learn just by looking and reading about a place you never thought about!


This book is such a treasure. You can spend hours looking through it all. Its a wonderful database for places in Oregon you may not be able to read about online. Buy this if you research genealogy in Oregon. Very helpful to identify census localities etc.

McArthur's Oregon Geographic Names is the definitive "all you need to know about Oregon" text. The author spends some 500 or so pages describing towns from Alsea to Zigzag. His details include a mix of pioneer history and native lore. What emerges is a singular and often unknown view of Oregon.

As a student of history, this text provides the "little" details that a larger view of history might neglect to tell. For instance, in discussing the origins of the Willamette river name, McArthur explores the first use of the word in local newspapers, and also calls on linguistic records in order to discover its first use. What the reader discovers here, and it is representative of most of the text, is that McArthur digs deep into the archives by following all available paper trials.

As a student of history, and of Oregon in general, this book is indispensable. I suspect too that it could be used by the "Cliff Clavens" of the world as a way of distributing "little known facts" about Oregon at parties.

Bryan Hiatt, Humanities Department Chemeketa Community College Salem, OR

McArthur's Oregon Geographic Names is the definitive "all you need to know about Oregon" text. The author spends some 500 or so pages describing towns from Alsea to Zigzag. His details include a mix of pioneer history and native lore. What emerges is a singular and often unknown view of Oregon.

As a student of history, this text provides the "little" details that a larger view of history might neglect to tell. For instance, in discussing the origins of the Willamette river name, McArthur explores the first use of the word in local newspapers, and also calls on linguistic records in order to discover its first use. What the reader discovers here, and it is representative of most of the text, is that McArthur digs deep into the archives by following all available paper trials.

As a student of history, and of Oregon in general, this book is indispensable. I suspect too that it could be used by the "Cliff Clavens" of the world as a way of distributing "little known facts" about Oregon at parties.

Bryan Hiatt, Humanities Department, Chemeketa Community College, Salem OR

As I anticipated this publication on Pacific jewelry and adornment is a striking publication. It is beautifully designed and printed.

There are over 240 high-quality photographs illustrating an awesome selection of objects from around the Pacific. The first class photography reveals the exquisite details of artistry used with various materials - all round this book makes great pacific ornamental reference material.

Enhanced throughout with the superb color images of Auckland-based photographer Krzysztof Pfeiffer, Pacific Jewelry And Adornment is the collaborative work of Roger Neich (Curator of Ethnology, Auckland Museum and Professor of Anthropology, University of Auckland) and Fuli Pereira (Curator of the Pacific Collection, Auckland Museum). This impressively informative work of art history showcases 250 representative examples of traditional jewelry from the Pacific made from the raw materials of jade, whale tooth and bone, shark teeth, tapa, shells, and plant fibers. Insightful information is provided to the use of personal decorative items to reflect power, status and community, as well as their significance with respect to high ceremonial occasions. Drawn from the collections of the Auckland Museum, these illustrative items reflect the vast geographical areas of the Pacific from Micronesia, Papua, New Guinea, and Fiji, to Samoa, Tonga, Hawaii, New Zealand, and the Cook Islands. Pacific Jewelry And Adornment is a strongly recommended addition to any academic or community library Oceanic Culture or Art History collection.

Roger Neich is one of the leading experts in Pacific ethnology with a score of informative and readable books and catalogs to his credit. Pacific Jewelry and Adornment is the most recent addition to his remarkable published work. Incorporating some of the best examples of Pacific Jewelry from the Aukland Museum and other collections, the book provides a concise and detailed overview of the diversity of styles, while outlining the forces of migration and trade that influenced the dispersal of form and material. As an ethnologist who has studied and written on Pacific adornment, I have read pretty much everything there is on the subject, and this book is the single best source. Beautifully illustrated also.

John Van Sant, a professor of Japanese History at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, has written an approachable and engaging look back at some of the very first Japanese travelers to the United States in the mid to late 1800s.

For the student of Asian-American History or Early Modern Asian Japanese History, Pacific Pioneers, is an invaluable reference that bridges the gap between the broad view of early Japan-U.S. interaction and the Japanese political reaction to it. Many of the popular books that deal with this area of history are concerned with its larger events such as the Perry and Iwakura Missions.

Van Sant's book is about individuals who came to a foreign land, and were instrumental in defining how the Western world viewed a recently opened island nation. Van Sant's scholarship is through and compiles a great deal of information that is often lost in the larger events of the period. Even those who aren't interested in Asian or Asian-American History can appreciate the people Van Sant has researched for their sense of wonder and discovery as some of the first to leave their homeland, which was closed off to nearly all foreign intercourse for over 200 years.

I find the book especially engaging because it examines how Americans reacted to their foreign visitors during a time when man of today's stereotypes about the Japanese culture had not been developed. Also, by examining the way in which the New World was viewed by the Japanese visitors, the reader can see how foreigners reacted to the Western world and found their culture to be exotic, captivating, and at times, frightening. The book is a revealing and honest look at how different cultures are viewed by people that were truly foreign to them.

A book I recommend for anyone who is interested in history on a very personal and revealing level.

This is a truly absorbing read. Author John Van Sant casts light on a little-explored corner of American history about which, I'm willing to bet, few readers have any knowledge at all. Some may be vaguely aware that a handful of shipwrecked Japanese sailors fetched up on American shores in the first half of the nineteenth century or that large Japanese embassies toured this country in 1860 and 1871-72. But how many know that scores of Japanese students were living in such an unlikely place as New Brunswick, New Jersey in the late 1860s and 1870s, studying about American institutions as well as "big guns" and "big ships." Or that several young Japanese aristocrats--including a later titan of Meiji Japan--were holed up in a utopian commune, under the watchful eye of an eccentric guru, doing housework and tending grapevines? Or that other countrymen and women of less elevated status, fleeing worsening economic conditions back home, were scraping out a bare living in Hawaii and northern California?

In clear economic prose, thankfully free of academic jargon, Van Sant explores each of these expatriate communities in some depth. (Oddly enough, the author makes no mention whatsoever of the troupes of Japanese entertainers criss-crossing the country during this same period. Even Mark Twain complained bitterly in 1867 about having to compete with a company of Japanese acrobats for an audience.) He also does the historical record a considerable service by freeing some of these pioneers--the "mysterious" Wakamatsu Colony of Gold Hill, California being a prime example--from an encrustation of myth. If I have any quibble at all with Pacific Pioneers, it is that it is too short. Highly recommended!

I think that Dr Van Sant tells a compelling tale of the first wave of Japanese settlers who came to the United States and Hawaii. This book is for anybody who is interested in Asian American History. It should be the first book cracked open for any student who signs up to take any Asian studies class, either in the undergraduate or post-graduate world. I loved it.

As the other reviewers have stated, it is an insightful book depicting the day-to-day existence of civilians suddenly thrust into the role of unlikely heroes and now called Sailors. That makes it unique from other military type books. Fahey enlisted in 1942 as did most of his shipmates aboard the USS Montpelier, not 1945 as the book news editorial review mis-stated. Secondly, the USS Montpelier was a Light Cruiser, not a Heavy Cruiser as one reviewer indicated. It was capable of traveling at speeds in excess of 30 knots which is why it served as the Admiral's flagship. Light Cruisers had nearly the fire power of Heavy Cruiser and nearly the speed of a destroyer which made it a highly versatile ship. It is likely that no other ship anywhere in Naval history has ever been in as much "action" as the Montpelier. Some called it the luckiest ship in the US Navy. If Fahey and his mates had not survived, this book would not exist and I would never have been born. In an ironic note, USS Montpelier was sold to the Japanese as scrap steel many years after the war. Currently there still is a USS Montpelier in the US Navy. The new vessel, which proudly bears this name, is a submarine.

This book realy tells it how it was for sailors of the U.S. Navy during WWII in the Pacific theatre. Fahey kept a diary of his daily experiences on board a heavy cruiser. All the little mundane details of life are revealed, which is what distinguishes this book from the "formal" history books. No student of history should miss this book.

This is a fascinating book. Written by a young man who joined the navy in 1942 and served through 1945 out in the Pacific aboard the light cruiser "Montpielier" Fahey is neither a career sailor, or a writer. But he accomplishes an amazing thing; that is transporting the reader to the author's time and place, and making you feel as if you are there, day by day. It's delightfully simple and fresh.

For anyone who is interested in WW2 naval history, this is a highly recommended companion to all the more formal works concerned with the great events and famous people involved. It really rounds out your perspective of what it was really like.

It also makes you appreciate the sacrifices made by this generation of Americans who left the safety of home to fight against evil in far away places.

Compiled by Jim Fredrickson, Railroad Shutterbug: Jim Fredrickson's Northern Pacific is a black-and-white historical photography showcase of the exceptional images of steam-era railroads captured on film in the mid-1900's. Each photograph stands opposite a detailed one-page presentation of background information. Railroad Shutterbug is a lavish, informative, visually oriented, highly recommended celebration railroad buffs and a welcome addition to personal and academic Railroading History collections.

Coming from a few generations of Northern Pacific and Milwaukee Railroad workers, this was a great chance for me to get a detailed view into my family heritage. Being a photographer myself, I have an appreciation for the quality of Jim's images as well as the composition of each frame.

When I picked up this book, I couldn't put it down. Each great photo is followed by another spectacular one. If you are a resident or frequent visitor to the Northwest, you will recognize many historical landmarks which are shown in their prime and operational context.

The characteristics of each engine and the detailed history of the railroad men who drove them, or the specific historical moments is simply wonderful to read and learn.

I eagerly anticipate the next book by Mr. Fredrickson.

Jim Fredrickson's book Railroad Shutterbug is not just a tremendous collection of beautiful black and white, and a few color, photos of Pacific Northwest railroading, but a collection of historical anecdotes as well.

Each photo is accompanied by a caption which goes two steps beyond. They describe the "why" and "what-fors." For example, they may describe why certain locomotives were used in this part of the country, and, the historical reasons for having so many depots and their original function (not just a point for passengers to come and go). The descriptions go beyond the normal "photo review" most commonly found in similar books, which give simple description, but don't explain "why." The book is beautifully printed on glossy paper, and the horizontal format increases the snapshot viewpoint. The large-format camera prints show incredible detail. I certainly hope this is not the last book from Mr. Fredrickson.

Dave Strohmaier masterfully paints us a portrait of wildfire in the West, drawing from a palette of sensitivity to the earth, gritty practical experience, humor, and skilled writing craft. He calls attention to the beauty of many elements of nature we take for granted, its paradoxes, and draws complex associations between these and wildfire. This book is not a primer on how wildfires are fought. It is a loving and thorough philosophical exploration of the meaning of fire, nature, and humanity.

Seasons of Fire by David J. Strohmaier is a superbly written, artistic, and thought-provoking novel on humankind's relationship to fire. Like the author, I too have "engaged" the fires of summer,which stirred deep, ontological questions about human evolution's debt to fire. The author expresses such ideas in a free-flowing narrative that bursts with imagery. Deep yet accesible (I will admit to using the dictionary at least once every 50 pages, but I admire an author who can skillfully use words that I should know, but don't).

To ape the vernacular of Hollywood producers, "it's like Edward Abbey meets Garrison Keillor!" David J. Strohmaier provides beatific explorations of philosophical questions with a smooth, down-home panache. I have never had the pleasure of attacking a fire with gunny sacks, but the author makes me wish I had:

"There is pleasure in completing little tasks--sweating your way up a hill to the flank of a fire under the sun and open sky of mid-July, then, in the company of several others, swatting out flames until either you smother all movement, or cool, moist night air tucks the fire in for the evening. This genuine satisfaction does not abdicate you from the responsibility of asking why you are doing what you are doing, and why it is meaningful. And of all the seasons of the year, summer, the summer of fire, is when these questions are cured."

Descriptions of a bygone Halloween when the author dressed as Satan himself, dancing around a fire, made me laugh out loud. A truly provocative and enjoyable book. I look forward to his next work.

Strohmaier captures the essense of what calls people from all walks of life to a world of flames and wild places.
As a veteran wildland firefighter for over 24 years,
it was a joy to read about the spirit that exist within every wildland firefighter. If you want to understand the
essentials of what motivates wildland firefighters, read this book.

This is a great book about a people who have been overlooked by modern society, CC is an exceptional writer who applies her passion and experience as a world traveller.

St. Paul island, one of the remote Pribilof Islands far off the coast of mainland Alaska, is just 14 miles long and eight miles wide. For over a decade, the author worked, lived on, and came to love this place, its fierce weather, its wildlife, and its people. Her spare, imagistic prose illuminates the darkness and beauty of the subarctic landscape.

Alaska's Pribilof Islands are incredibly beautiful and surreal. Seven Words for the Wind captures a piece of that beauty through a series of essays and field notes. Having lived in the Pribilofs for four years I was most impressed by the thoughtful nature of this book as well as the insights provided by the author. I would highly suggest this book for anyone intending to visit the islands, see the seal or bird rookeries or just interested in learning about a different culture.