Pacific University Books

Strongly recommended for academic library collections as an American History primary resource, Exploring With Lewis And Clark: The 1804 Journal Of Charles Floyd presents a journal of expeditionary writings by Sergeant Charles Floyd, one of the first three men enlisted in Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery. Born in 1782, Floyd kept a precise diary of the expedition, yet he sadly succumbed to a ruptured appendix and became the only member to die during this epic journey of discovery, losing his life near present-day Sioux City. Exploring with Lewis and Clark photographically reproduces the pages Floyd wrote in his own handwriting, a typeface transcript for easy reading, extensive historical and context notes, and a thoughtfully informative introduction. Skillfully edited by James Holmberg and illustrated with a handful of photographs and artwork, Exploring With Lewis And Clark is a superbly presented primary source of American history, and an impressive contribution to the study of the Lewis & Clark expedition that is not to be missed.

We were looking for the early history of Salmon P Chase and this book fit the bill

Originally printed in 1904, G.P. Putnam's Sons. Reprinted 2000, Bedford, MA: Applewood Books.

The modern American field guides we are used to -- Peterson, Kaufman, Sibley, etc. -- offer detailed migration information, pithy descriptions of each bird, and digitally enhanced images. On the internet, dozens of bird-identification sites can be found, and many more websites allow bird songs to bubble forth from our computers. It wasn't always this way, though, and F. Schuyler Mathews' 1904 Field Book of Wild Birds and Their Music, reissued by Applewood Books, is a pocket-sized reminder of what bird books used to be. Whereas our modern field guides are bent on helping us quickly and accurately identify birds, many popular field guides of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries blended the goal of identification with encouragement for readers to revel in the beauty of birds and their music.

Mathews writes this about the Ruffled Grouse (our Ruffed Grouse): "There is no doubt about it at all, here is the kettledrum of Nature's orchestra!" About the Red-winged Blackbird: "A beautiful slim and smooth black bird with scarlet epaulets sways unsteadily on the supple stem of a cattail on the margin of the pond ..." About the White-throated Sparrow: "This handsomely attired Sparrow is one of the most distinguished members of the family." Contrast this with Sibley's description of the same species: "Smaller and plumper than other Zonotrichia sparrows. Rufous on wings and sharply outlined white throat distinctive." Looking at older field guides, one starts to wonder, in our rage to identify identify identify, has something been lost?

Mathews' Field Book of Wild Birds and Their Music describes the Eastern birds (or most of them) in elaborate passages, but what is most ambitious about this book is the music. Mathews renders each bird's song on a musical scale, complete with liner notes and commentary. Don't read music? Don't worry. Mathews offers both a quick primer on how to read music and a glossary of musical terms. Paging back to Mathews' handy glossary, you'll know just what he means when the lark's song is described as affettuoso or the robin's melody as sostenuto. On the other hand, if you do happen to read music, this guide breathes new life into bird songs.

Mathews concedes that

"Of course it is a more or less problematic matter to deal with wild music. It is not amenable in any respect to law. However, the question involved is not whether the bird's song is radically different from ours - we may admit that point - but whether it may be truthfully and logically recorded upon the musical staff. That question, it is the object of this book to answer affirmatively, and with due regard for all the difficulties involved" (xvii).

F. Schuyler Mathews' Field Book of Wild Birds and Their Music is not the only book of its time that attempted to capture bird songs on the printed page. S. Miller Hageman's Bird Songs (also of 1904), for instance, presents bird songs in the form of poems. In that book, Hageman not only poetically recreates the rhythm and tone of each bird, but works to capture the poetic essence, if you will, of each species. Many authors writing about birds have focused first on the joy of listening to birds, then on the joy of watching them, as bird songs have been considered a primary enhancement to everyday life. Mathews is simply following along in this tradition.

F. Schuyler Mathews, author of numerous books and field guides in the early twentieth century, was also a careful watercolorist, and this field guide includes 53 plates. Whereas the early editions of Field Book of Wild Birds and Their Music, still available in many libraries, featured Mathews' water colors in the three-color lithographic process, the black-and-white reproductions in this volume pale in comparison. That said, this field guide is still a startling little book with the very great potential of helping us see and think about what we've come to take for granted every time we open a field guide.

Finding The People Who Flaked The Stone At English Camp: San Juan Island by Angela E. Close (Professor of Anthropology, University of Washington) is a seminal and scholarly study of American approaches to lithic analysis - that is, attempts to learn more about natural history through the study of the stones of the earth. Especially focusing upon the excavation of English Camp on San Juan island, Finding The People Who Flaked The Stone At English Camp applies an approach based on attempts to trace the life-histories of all excavated artifacts, from raw material procurement to discard and entry into archaeological record, and concludes that women did a great deal of the tool manufacture at the English Camp site. A highly precise and technical scientific study and persuasive discourse.

This is one of the best books on a rather broad subject matter. The authors have done a commendable job of covering the availability and use of firearms during one of the most dramatic times in American history. Not only do they document the use of major manufacturers products, they also cover the use and possession of lesser known products as well. This is a well written and entertaining compendium of information that is bound to go down in literature history as one of the great books on the subject it covers. I recommend this book if you have any interest in this subject. It is well worth the money spent!

The Story of all 29 voyages to the Pacific Coast Before 1792 between what is now the California-Oregon Border & the Bering Sea

The book is an outstanding work and field guide for unusual species encountered while fishing in Pacific Central America. Text and Photographs are the best I've seen, and the information the most comprehensive to date. The book is a masterpiece for the genre.

John Haines has often quoted the novelist Hermann Broch: "Political indifference is ethical indifference." Haines adds that soon it becomes esthetic indifference as well. "For the Century's End," Haines's latest book, contains poems that are exemplary of political, ethical and esthetic commitment. Poems such as "Blood," "Politics and the Dead," and "Kent State, 1970" show a meticulous attention to craft, a deep, melancholy sense of history, and an abiding sympathy and outrage on behalf of history's victims. In poems such as "In the House of Wax," he creates grim historic panoramas in the sparest of words: "Crowned heads and axes fall,/thugs and jailors rise/and displace each other/in this long, uneasy walk/we have littered/with claims and captions." Not many contemporary poems can claim to be "important"--i.e. to combine excellence of phrase and image with urgency of message. These are, and these do.

This is a really cool bit by Darwin, who spent some serious time observing earthworms. He made his friends help him sometimes too, it seems. Ninety-five bucks is a lot of money though. Check a univerity library or something and Xerox it.

This is book that was originally written in Russian in 1924. It was first published in English in 1953 from the Foreign Languages Publishing House in Moscow. However, following the eclipsing of the legacy of Joseph Stalin during the Khruschev era the publication was allowed to lapse. The Enlish translation was only taken up again by the People' Publication House in Peking in 1964.

A collection of lectures delivered at Sverdlov Univeristy by Joseph Stalin in 1924, this book is important in the present day as a early presentation of the problems facing the young Soviet Union. The book outlines the first tenets of the theory of "socialism in one counrty" which aould have the Soviet people save their nation from world-wide forces of reaction by building a strong independent socialist state. This was a break from the previous Soviet dogma of world-wide revolution which alleged that the Soviet Union could only save itself by encouraging proletatrian revolutions in other countries. Because Leon Trotsky adhered closely to the world-wide revolution theory, this book can be seen as the opening shot in the epic battle within the Communist party of the Soviet Union between the Trotsky and Stalin wings of the party.