Pacific University Books

This classic work by one of the great yarn-spinners of all time includes some wonderful descriptive information about California places and people in the early 1860s and some gripping, heartstopping tales about King's own mountaineering exploits. Even in his early 20s, Clarence King was recognized for leaderhip and intellectual ability. He served with the Army Topographic Engineers on the survey of the Western United States along the 40th parallel and was an intimate of Henry Adams and his wife in their small social/intellectual circle in Washington D.C. (See Patricia O'Toole's "The Five of Hearts"). He established his national reputation for being a shrewd, practical man of science when he discovered and exposed a stock swindle based on salted ore and fraudulent assay samples when asked to evaluate a mining promotion in Colorado. "Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada" is a non-chronological, semi-autobiographical reconstruction of some of King's time (circa 1862-63) with Josiah Whitney's Survey, commissioned by the State legislature to catalogue and evaluate California geologic and mineral resources. It is an entertaining and engrossing narration of one foolhardy, death-defying exploit after another. Like those of John Muir (another classic, albeit overrated talesman of the Range of Light), Clarence King's numerous renditions of his own hairsbreadth escapes from impossibly precarious positions by the power of luck, pluck and sheer physical prowess, while entertaining and enthralling, were made possible only by his own chronic rash foolhardiness, if not by tremendous powers of exaggeration. A better man was his fellow draft-dodger (the Civil War was going on back East all the while they were dancing around in the mountains of California, after all), William Brewer. Brewer served longer, harder and more responsibly than King in the Whitney Survey. Brewer also wrote a factually more thorough and reliable description of conditions in the young state of California in a series of letters home to his family in New England (collected as "Up and Down California"), with none of King's histrionics but just as entertaining in its own way. King's book does include some unique insights. One is his near-comic description of the "Piker" rubes (from Pike County, Missouri), rural folk residing in the foothills of the Southern San Joaquin Valley, which can be read as a precourser of all hilarious mountain folk descriptions, from Li'l Abner through the Beverley Hillbillies to Deliverance. But truth be told (rarely enough, one suspects), this book is mostly about the indefatigable King and his own personal exploits in the Southern Sierra. While King's literary talent was substantial, his writing (and indeed his entire public life and historic reputation) were seemingly unilluminated in any way by his own domestic arrangements. These included a life-long love relationship and common law marriage to a black woman, Ada, with whom he maintained a household including their several children. Not only did he keep the marriage secret from all of his prominent social contacts, but he kept his own notorious identity and true name a secret from his wife and children until just before he died. Still, under the constant strain of maintaining a double identity, he continued to support his family and maintained an exhausting schedule of international travel, geological consulting and writing until he died prematurely from consumption at the age of 59. (See Thurman Wilkins' "Clarence King"). You won't find any mention of King's real family anything King wrote for public consumption, or even for the consumption of his well-placed friends. Altogether, this book makes for a slightly less than satisfying cud to chew over, but it tastes pretty good the first time on the way down.

Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada is essential reading for anyone who both loves those mountains and wants to get a glimpse of life there before it reached the level of settlement it has today. Whether or not all the stories here are strictly factual, they are often both gripping and entertaining. Additionally, they bring the reader some sense of what rural central California life was like at that time.
Clarence King was a gifted wordsmith. His hilarious, politically incorrect descriptions of western characters are reminiscent of some of the best incisive commentary of Mark Twain. Then his descriptions of climbing in the mountains are so intense that you may even wince as you are carried along as he describes some of the most hair-raising brushes with death. Those who have been where King describes will certainly feel what King has written as they read along.
One reviewer, though entertained, seems to doubt what King says. I don't. Though there may be a little hyperbole in King's description of events, the reader should remember that at that time the average guy was far more physically fit than the average guy today. You had to be or you didn't make it, because every day in the wilderness was fraught with challenge and physical danger.
All in all, you could say that this book is a collection of bold tales well told. I particularly like the stories of his crossing the desert coming to California, of the hog farmers, of his escape from determined bandits, of his ultimate conquest of Mt Whitney, and of all the colorful characters he meets in his path both in the Sierras and at Shasta.
And though some might take him for a bigot because of some of his comments about the natives, remember that he saves the sharpest point of his pen for the most worthless characters of his own stock who abound in the California of his day. Whatever you think about what King has written, once you pick this up you'll find it hard to put down until you've finished the last paragraph.

Clarence King sure knows how to tell a good story. Whether they are true stories, well that's for you to decide. But really, it doesn't matter. You'll read of him dangling from the edge of great cliffs and running from wild west bandits, all the while keeping the reader wondering how he'll ever live to tell the tale. Overall the book is a collection of stories by a man who loved the Sierra Nevada, for it vast wilderness was his playground.

This autobiography covers the beginning of Gorky's adult years at the age of eleven (!) and goes until he decides to enter university at the age of fifteen. At the age of 9, Gorky is thrown to the wolves (`the horrors of everyday life'). His `career' goes over architect apprentice, dish-washer on boats, bird trapper, nurse, icon seller and ultimately foreman at the age of 14!
He sees around him `men with insatiable sexual hunger', `dirt and the inevitable viciousness that came with the hard, half-starved life that people had to lead' and `a corrosive, exasperating boredom enveloping everything'. A world full of promiscuity, obscenities, `where all men are enemies'. Moreover, people were living in an environment of religious fanaticism brought on by a terrifying God.

But, he also made crucial encounters with clairvoyant men, who teach him: `go on, try and find out for yourself.' They force him to take decisions and make him understand clearly: `I must do something, or I'll be finished'. At the end, he tries to enroll himself as a student at the Kazan University.

This book is also a profound laudation on reading which was crucial for Gorky's escape out of darkness: `books made me invulnerable to many things' and that notwithstanding the `deep humiliation and the many insults his passion for reading inflicted on him'.

This work is a dark and terrible portrait of Russia under the tsars at the end of the 19th century.
But it shows how an individual can succeed in keeping his self-esteem and escape a certain intellectual death, here mainly through a passion for reading and knowledge.

Not to be missed.

Gorky's 2nd book of triology is every bit as good as the first. Russia's favorite Russian writer.

The second part of Gorky's autobiographical trilogy takes him out of childhood and into his early teens. He develops into a headstrong, tough and intelligent boy. The difficult relationship with his Grandfather in the first book develops in amusing and shocking ways, while the influence exerted over him by his Grandmother also changes - but I don't want to give too much away!

What is most remarkable about My Apprenticeship, I think, apart from the humour and beauty of Gorky's rugged prose, is that the dilemmas faced by Gorky, growing up in poverty, and the dilemmas of those around him, are quite inseperable from the dilemmas facing people today (or at least, facing me), both existential and material. A remarkable passage towards the end of the book rises towards a magesterial outburst from the older writer, in which he explains why he is outlining in such graphic terms the hardship of life, that can force people to acts of such desperate barbarity. His duty it seems, is to make people aware of what is around them, to strip away the illusions that we willingly blind ourselves with, to protect ourselves from uncomfortable truths. In the age of Brass Eye vs tabloid truth-bending, this could not be more topical.

A gripping read on every level. It loses a star, I think, in comparison to the first installment. My Apprenticeship meanders a little, but the characters are as unforgettable.

P.S. Some trilogy's can be read out of order. This one can't.

Though NATURAL STATE is a diverse and well-written collection of essays on natural history and the general natural landscape of California, it lacks substance. By this I do not mean that the essays themselves have nothing to contribute to one's overall understanding of natural history and its appreciation. Far from it- the essays have plenty to contribute. However, the form their contribution takes irked me as I read the volume. Many of the essays are simply vapid descriptions, while others are so scholarly and technical that one wonders why they are in an anthology constructed for the supposedly "general" reader. Still, NATURAL STATE does a decent job of spanning California's many natural facets, and the diversity of subjects is broad. A better anthology (though I think it's out of print) is Hal Borland's OUR NATURAL WORLD, which is most likely available at local libraries.

This is a landscape experience in which the real, observed landscape leads to an internally experienced landscape that is far richer and more personal. The focus of this work is the heart and mind's eye and it truely is an erotic and vicarious festival for the senses.

NATURAL STATE, by Steven Gilbar and David Brower, describes the landscape of California, picturesque and natural, infinite and primal-- the most geographically diverse in the world. This is a much called for collection of popular as well as academic writing, from geologic and metaphysical creation, to realism and fantasy, and modes of destruction. The chapters by the Cahto Indians, John Steinbeck, Mary Austin, Henry Miller and Joan Didion are poetic essays; those by Barry Lopez, Ann Zwinger, Wallace Stegner, Jane Hollister Wheelwright and Gary Paul Nabhan are in the professional scholarly mode. Another 30 stories stretch between thos! e two poles.

I cannot wait to see the movie. Bravo!

In his foreword, David Brower writes: "The 2 million Californians here when I arrived have already become 32 million. California wildness deserves a chance to recover, and `Natural State' lets us know why." Well said, but with California's population now at 36 million, and increasing over a half-million annually, a staggering growth rate now totally attributable to post-1970 mass immigration and descendants, the bigger question on recovery is HOW?

While "Natural State" is no downer, packed with 40 eclectic selections, among them John Steinbeck's "Flight" into the unforgiving chaparral, Robert Louis Stevenson's mesmerizing "The Sea Fogs," Jack London's liberating "On Sonoma Mountain," it is impossible to read this book without feeling frequent pangs of loss.

Such loss is sometimes explicit, such as in Wallace Stegner's melancholy "Remnants." At other times the reader knows what's to come. In "Into the [Salinas] Valley," 1860, William Brewer writes about the now extinct California grizzly: "A man stands a slight chance if he wounds a bear, but not mortally, and a shot must be well directed to kill. The universal advice by everybody is to let them alone if we see them, unless we are well prepared for battle and have experienced hunters along."

In "Ramblings in Yosemite," approaching the High Sierra in the 1870s, Joseph LeConte is struck by "the great massiveness and grandeur of the clouds and the extreme blueness of the sky," Mark Twain's "Lake Tahoe" is "not MERELY transparent, but dazzlingly, brilliantly so."

Recurrent is the desire to escape the multitudes. In "Climbing Matterhorn Peak," Jack Kerouac's character, Japhy Ryder, "modeled on the poet Gary Snyder," is determined to camp far enough along so that he and his buddies won't "wake up tomorrow morning and find three dozen school teachers on horseback frying bacon in our backyard."

Ann Zwinger, "Trumpets of Light," writes: "More than 706,000 acres, over 94 percent of [Yosemite], is managed as wilderness and can never be developed. A permit system applies to hikers and groups on horseback who plan to remain overnight, thus guaranteeing that hikers are not falling over one another or overusing one area."

Three cheers for good management, but how rarely it is mentioned in such otherwise enlightened accounts that ever growing future populations will mean, by iron laws of mathematics, ever shrinking nature rations for any given individual.

California does seem to have a few natural features even beyond the ability of man's numbers to overwhelm, such as the Tule fog in the Great Central Valley. David Mas Masumoto writes, "The fog continues to roll in. Where it's heading I do not know. It passes in front of the porch like a shifting cloud. If I stare at it long enough it seems that I start to move instead. I imagine our farmhouse cutting through the gray mist like a lost ship, my porch transformed into the bridge."

Very nice. However, while the fog is still rolling in, unfortunately, so are the subdivisions. California farmland is now sinking beneath them at such a rate that the Central Valley has earned the American Farmland Trust's designation as "the nation's number one most threatened agricultural area."

About Southern California, Joan Didion corrects the misconception of an endlessly bland climate, the reality being "infrequent but violent extremes." And Californians experience ever more destructive extremes as greater numbers of people continue their lemming-like advance onto shorelines, cliff edges, floodplains and wildfire zones.

Nor does Los Angeles smog go un-represented. Hildegarde Flanner, "A Vanishing Land," writes, "From the foothills above Pasadena I can see for sixty miles or more ... All this delights the eye, the mind, the heart, with romantic geometries and the pride of home. But not for long. Gradually all those remarkable harmonies and differences of texture fade and flatten while a horizon of spectral murk advances ... a mobile, drifting wall." A problem no longer confined to LA, as anyone can attest who has been enveloped by the enormous wall of Central Valley smog pushing up against the Sequoia.

An eloquent afterward by Gary Snyder advocates "a non-nationalistic idea of community, in which commitment to pure place is paramount [and] cannot be ethnic or racist. Here is perhaps the most delicious turn that comes out of thinking about places from the standpoint of place: anyone of any race, language, religion, or origin is welcome, as long as they live well on the land."

Yes, a greater sense of community, but isn't it a little late in the day to be betting the farm on reinventing humankind? Could one warning sign be that among all the peoples of Earth it is probably only those of European heritage who would consider making ethnicity irrelevant to place "delicious"? Or even think it remotely possible?

And how would this work? Would a household, likely European, that champions feminism, live serenely next door to one that devoutly practices female circumcision--all because everyone is joyously wrapped up in a overriding commitment to preserve, say, the Sacramento River watershed? With all due respect, this is what comes of environmentalists living too much within their own heads.

A popular way to avoid taking a position on any controversial un-PC problem, such as Third-World-immigration-driven overpopulation, is simply to call for a "we must" thought revolution. Yes, what a wonderful world it will be once everyone agrees with you and me! But until that great day comes, calling for a thought revolution provides a convenient way to appear courageously visionary and A Nice Guy, while hiding from controversy--as nature burns.

Among its other strengths, Steven Gilbar's fascinating book should serve as a constant reminder of what we are losing--and how fast. The fact remains that population growth is California's, and America's, number-one nature-flattening machine, a machine that is mostly fueled by relentless mass legal and illegal immigration.

What is being lost? Read this excellent book to find out.

Dan Flores picks up where he left off in Caprock Canyonlands and Horizontal Yellow to give an overview of the state of bioregional history in the American West, followed by some chapters applying those latest findings and approaches to some specific times and places.

There's a lot to learn here.

Flores puts "paid" to the Roussellian "eco-noble savage" idea of Paul Shepard. In Exhibit A, he notes how the Comanche, after becoming (allowing themselves to be?) co-opted by the global market, were exerting their own downward pressure on bison numbers.

He shows how sociocultural history and ecohistory meet in forming bioregionalism by documenting Utah Mormons' high hostility to environmentalism. In doing so, he nuances Powell's high praise for the environmental standards of Mormon communal development in the 19th century.

He talks about the southern Plains, Texas' Caprock, in a way that you too will lament there being no National Park there.

All of this done in an easy to read style.

One complaint: The title "The Natural West" is a bit misleading. After discussing how "the West" is actually composed of several dozen bioregions, Flores basically ignores anything west of the Rockies -- the Great Basin, Sonoran, Mohave and Upper Basin/Northwest deserts, the Sierras, Southern and Northern Cascades, and the various sections of Pacific Coast.

With that allowance, it's a great book.

I would add to the previous review that the first chapter provides a critique of Paul Shepard's thesis that our society is broken, and will never become whole again until we return to our hunter-gatherer roots. I was interested in this because I am a big Paul Shepard fan and have not before seen a critique of his ideas from a source I can respect. I don't know that Flores even gets Shepard's ideas completely straight, and I wish he had devoted more space to his critique, but at least it's something to get you thinking about.

I hope I haven't turned off those looking for a more straight-forward natural history of the West and southern plains, because except for that first chapter, that's what this book is- and it's excellent in its digestible chapters on components of this region.

Everyone always loves the West -- people hike the mountains for adventure, they hide out in the small towns when they're broke, and they buy ranchettes when they have money. The West is like a big old classic car that symbolizes something dependable and that people love to get in and hit the road -- the loooong road. "The Natural West" is for those brave enough to get under the hood and see how that car operates.

"Environmental History" is a fairly recent discipline, coming out of conventional history meeting ecology and the changing understanding of what a human being really is. Dan Flores is a hip guy with a smart take on the whole field. He's out there hiking, taking photos (they're in the book), running his wolf-dog, building his adobe house, and fighting the exotic weeds on his acreage -- and all the time he's thinking, "How does this work? How does all this fit together?"

Not that he will hand you a lot of predigested answers. This book, broken into chapters by region, is a tool kit, a beginner's manual, a map to the territory. It's a place to start getting under the hood and finding out how the motor really works. He's handed you all the clues.

This is a book to keep on hand and return to. Every revisitation will reveal the beginning of a new trail.

Really I would rate this book at 4 ½ stars if Amazon would let us. It is a good book, but, at least for me, it does not quite make it to 5. I felt a little too much time was spent on the history of the missionaries sent to the Nez Perce lands. I do realize though that this was an important event that caused a rift in the tribe, so it needed to be covered. When I was reading the bits about the lives of the missionaries, the book started to bog down. I was more interested in learning about the Nez Perce than the settlers. Other than that, I thought the book was good, and well written. I will definitely be reading more on the Nez Perce in the future!

Growing up in Idaho, and in my youth occasionally hearing some of the stories of the tragic flight of the Nez Perce, led me to read several books on the subject. No other story in American history is as fascinating as this one. Many good books have been written about it (along with a few that are not so good), but this one is easily the best. It is the most detailed, most accurate, and yet the most readable of all of them. Be warned, however--it is long (700+ pages), and nearly three fourths of the book deals with events that occured prior to the well-known Nez Perce war of 1877. For a shorter read about just the war itself Beal's "I Will Fight No More, Forever" might be a better choice. But for a comprehensive history of the entire region and its people, this is the best.

The appalling treatment of the Nez Perces is a sordid and shameful chapter in the modern history of the Pacific Northwest. Mr. Josephy carefully and meticulously describes the downfall of this peaceful and friendly people. His account begins slowly, but it accelerates with the momentum of a huge steam engine and thunders to a climax that left me in tears.

In Wisconsin, in the fall of 2007, I saw a news release that Bill Hosokawa had died. I was intrigued that his death was national news. He was an admired editor at The Denver Post, back when I lived in Denver. The news release said that Bill Hosokawa had writen Nisei: The Quiet Americans. I ordered a used copy of the book, though Amazon.
Nisei is a very interesting book. It gives the history of the very early and early arrival of the Japanese in the USA. After the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Japanese were still eligible to come to the USA, notably to do farm labor.
The Issei were first-generation Japanese-Americans, few speaking English, none allowed to obtain citizenship. The Nisei were their children, most not speaking fluent Japanese, citizens of the US by soil of birth. The average Nisei was in his or her late teens when WWII broke out.
The Japanese in Hawaii and on the mainland had been under surveillance before the onset of the war, by the Special Defense Unit of the Department of Justice. Three categories of danger, A, B, or C, had been established. "Leaders of organizations with strong Japanese ties were automatically given an "A" classification; in the event of war all "A" Issei would be picked up immediately."
The internment of West-coast Japanese-Americans proved to have been unnecessary. Attorney General Biddle "eventualy admitted that his men had been making searches without warrants in pursuit of fifth columnists, but they encountered 'no Japanese saboteurs...and no illegal radio transmitter was found at all.'" He said "We have not uncovered through these searches any dangerous persons that we could not otherwise know about."
But, the internment of West-Coast Japanese did occur. The book tells of the internment process and details the experience of the Japanese in the camps.Poetry heading two chapters tells part of the story:

Snow upon the rooftop
Snow upon the coal
Winter in Wyoming-
Winter in My Soul


Against the New Year sky
Beyond the fence flutters
The Stars and Stripes

The story of the creation and activity of the Japanese Americans Citizens League is quite interesting. Its executive leader became Mike Masaoka, from Utah, who before accepting the leadership offer had talked with friends, including Utah Senator Elbert Thomas, a Mormon missionary in Japan in his youth. Senator Thomas encouraged Mike Masaoka to take the JACL post.(Senator Thomas also proved valuable in assisting the Japanese-Americans after the internment took place.)
In the book, there is a wealth of detail about many aspects of the experience of the Japanese-Americans after the onset of the war. The Japanese on Hawaii were not interned--they were too integral to the local economy. The Kibei, children of Issei, who had returned for a while to Japan for Japanese education proved invaluable to the US military as translators. The Nisei fought very bravely with the US military in Europe.
This book, Nisei: The Quiet Americans, tells a "brief epic" story of one national group's experience, accomplishments, and contributions after arriving in the USA. I found it very interesting reading.

Nisei: The Quiet Americans is a great book on the internment period of the Japanese Americans in World War II. It tells of the history of the Japanese coming to America, the development of the Japanese during the years before the war, and it vividly describes life in the internment barracks. I especially liked this book because it gave a comprehensive guide to the history of the Japanese Americans. Nisei: The Quiet Americans is an excellent addition to any history buff's bookshelf!

Most Americans are familiar with the history of oppression in our nation only as it was taught in school. While we know quite a bit about overt prejudice against blacks and Native Americans, and maybe against organized labor and our particular ancestors, we know little about other ethnic groups. Completed when Nixon was president, "Nisei" was an attempt to bring to our attention the struggle and ultimate triumph of Japanese-Americans. The book was a huge undertaking, and the author, a newspaper journalist and editor, takes pains to present an unbiased look at the history of his people in the context of the America in which they lived. Ironically, my one complaint about the book is that it is too even-handed. Mr. Hosokawa often went to great lengths to present the viewpoints of government officials who formulated policies that discriminated against Issei and Nisei, especially those decisions made in the wake of Pearl Harbor. The book was written in the style of most history books at the time, and it can be a dry read. Still, the book is a critical resource for anyone researching Japanese-American history.

Many non-Australians won't even have heard of Fremantle. Freo to the locals of Perth. Dowson must have expended much sweat in compiling this collection of old photos of the port of Perth. Especially impressive for the earliest photos around 1850. Daguerrotypes had only been recently invented. And Perth and Freo had so few people in the 1850s, that it is remarkable that any photos were taken, had survived, and been tracked down by the author.

It may not be readily apparent from the book, but Freo and Perth were different places, separated by undeveloped bushland, even up till World War 2. Most of the background and buildings in the photos are now absent. Except perhaps for a few buildings in the heart of Freo.

The book is also accurate in portraying the dominant Anglo-Irish background of Freo's inhabitants. Wasn't much diversity back then. The photos end in 1950. Just as a wave of immigration from southern and eastern Europe were to commence. Then, later, from Asia. Giving current Freo a strong multiethnic flavour. (Especially Italian.)

This is an exceptional book. It is a fine work of art as well as a serious photographic history of a "British empire" seaport. I would recommend it to anyone who is fascinated by the lives of people long gone and who also wants to marvel at some wonderful photography. Many thanks to the author, John Dowson, for providing such a treasure.

I gave this book five stars because I am the author. Looking at the fact that the book is rating just under the 3 millionth most popular book on Amazon, it seems like it needs some help. The problem with photographic books on small cities (Fremantle has only 30,000 people) is that it is very hard to get people outside the city interested. Pity, because any lover of old photographs would enjoy the 250 approx images in the book dating from 1850 to 1950. My favourite one is a 1919 one of an open truck full of cauliflowers, all stacked on top of each other with no net or cover. The truck has solid tyres and the driver (sitting calmly at the wheel in a coat and tie) has brought his load into town over rough limestone roads.

Cameras 100 years ago often produced better images than the technological marvels of today. This book was produced regardless of cost to the highest standards, though I did endure a struggle to get the publisher not to charge me an extra $30,000 for the special 170gsm cream paper I chose. The book won the Western Australian Premier's Prize for non fiction and the first edition sold out in weeks. What you are buying now is the revised edition, with the errors removed and 8 extra pages put in in a fit of generosity. Most of the errors were tiny ones, but there was a real beauty- one photo featured a hotel which is actually in Geraldton, not Fremantle. That was dumb, but then some clown had written Fremantle all over the bottom of the photograph and the hotel plans checked out.

The book is big and heavy- don't drop it on your toes. But still, I like it. I hope you do.

As with other books of this style and Author, There are no maps of any use nor are there GPS Coordinates. While instructions are included so the sites they are very vague and many depend on your finding a site your not interested in, in order to find the one you want. With so many dirt roads in mining area's the directions to turn left of a dirt road does not help with there could be 10 dirt roads in a span of three hundred feet.

All of Shawn Hall's books are excellent. We have used them for several years to plan trips and then go find the locations he mentions. He gives the reader not only the history of the site, but what remains today of the ghost towns, old stage stops, and railroad towns.

Shawn Hall obviously has a love of history and it's preservation. "Old Heart of Nevada: Ghost Towns and Mining Camps of Elko County" is obviously the result of 1000's of hours of research and countless miles of off-road exploration. Hall's account of these now vanished towns is both factual and facinating as he provides the history, stories, and current state of dozens of now defunct towns, mines, and ranch sites of the area.
The text alone is worth the price for the facts and stories, but even better are the historical photos which can often be contrasted with the author's own photo's of the same area.
A must-have for any Nevada historian or explorer.

I finished reading this book a few days ago, and I quickly realized that next summer I will have to read it again. The book is an overflowing fountain of information about Polynesian, Austronesian, and Papauan languages. It is written in a similar style to the Cambridge Language Survey books, though it is shorter and written in a colloquial style designed for those with only a basic knowledge of linguistics. (This is not to say the information is simplistic. Lynch starts with rather basic explanations, and then jumps into a massive amount of comparative linguistic data.)

The book also goes beyond the scope of grammar sketches. It starts with a history of the Pacific region. It then discusses commonalities of the Pacific languages. Next come chapters dealing specifically with each of the three languages families (above). He then discusses the development and current use of pidgins, including Tok Pisin, Bislama, and Hiri Motu (including where the name "Hiri Motu" comes from). Following this is material on cultural use of language: politeness registers, gender registers, kinship terms, areas of social importance, etc. Lastly, he discusses language shift, death, and revival.

Overall, this is an excellent work for anyone who has any interest in Polynesian languages. As I said, I will probably read it again next year so more information can sink in.

Lynch goes where no one has gone before in attempting to cover, however briefly, the salient characteristics and historical development of something like fourteen hundred Oceanic and Polynesian languages. Most readers will never have heard of any of them, but they occupy a far-flung territory from Easter Island to Australia. Many are dying out; Lynch gives figures for the number of speakers of some languages, and these are a real revelation to those of us who speak English. Fifty speakers? Astonishing. Six speakers? How can this be? Lynch lives in Vanuatu (formerly the New Hebrides), and his dicussion of Bislama-the creole that the native French and English speakers of those islands use with each other in preference to either English or French-is particularly interesting. In general the linguistic diversity of the region is mind-boggling. As the only book ever to attempt such a survey, this must rate five stars, and I doubt that anyone would ever be able to do a better job.

As a person long fascinated by the world of languages, "Pacific Languages: An Introduction" is a most welcome read.

Focusing not only on the Austronesian languages of the Pacific proper, but also on Papuan and indigenous Australian languages, the book gives a good level of essential information for the linguistics student who is not familiar with these languages. Each grammatical point is given with examples, which are highly valuable for a student wanting to understand how these languages work/worked in practice. The examples given are written in very accessible and easy-to-read English that will suit the student wanting to gain an overview of the basics of these languages very well.

I do have some criticism, however, of the way in which there - on the whole - seems to be too much focus on a relatively small number of points about languages of the Pacific, Australia and New Guinea. In the grammar section, for instance, there often seems to be a focus on some points at the expense of others and a broader overview of points such as complex sentences and the verbal tense systems would be much better. The same is true of the phonology section, which is perhaps flawed by focusing too much on quite insignificant exceptions to general trends among the phonology of these languages. It would have been better to give as many "typical" examples as possible of sound systems of each language group. The phonology section also lacks the illustration of important contrasts that made the grammar section as good as it is.

Also, I feel there is too much focus on the use of these languages today rather than their structure. I believe what ought to be a linguistics textbook should focus much more on the actual structure of the languages.

All in all, though, even if flawed, this is a very useful reference work.

The book is an excellent, extensive look into the history of Portland's elected officials. Even lifelong Portlanders will be sure to pick up some new factoid or historical reference they probably didn't know.

However, a few mistakes snuck through despite the research and footnoting effort. Nothing too bad, several typos, listing one date for an event and then listing another even in the same chapter. Nothing that couldn't be fixed by going through the book again with a different editor and cleaning up the text. It did make me wonder about the editing process she used, because the lengthy fact-checking and researching is one of the main claims of the book yet obvious errors snuck through.

This ambitious work covers more than a century and a half of the history of Portland, Oregon, from its days as a clearing in the Pacific Northwest wilderness to its present status as 28th largest city in the United States. (This review title, by the way, refers to two of the community's most prominent nicknames. "Stumptown" was an early reference to the number of trees that had to be felled to make room for the growing community; Portland lays claim to being the "city of roses" today by hosting the annual Rose Festival).

Author Jewel Lansing knows the city government from the inside; she served a term as the elected auditor. Since her retirement from elective politics, she's devoted considerable energy to researching all facets of the city's history. The story unfolds chronologically, with the 42 men and two women who have served as Portland mayor providing the thread of continuity. The text weaves together the political, business and cultural forces that have shaped today's city.

It's an often lively story. At the dawn of the twentieth century, Portland was known as a wide-open community where corruption and vice flourished. Men who ventured too close to the wrong areas of the waterfront would find themselves shanghaied for service aboard oceangoing ships. Lansing covers the wave of reform that swept the city and state shortly thereafter, and many of the great battles that dominated the ensuing decades, such as the fight over public vs. private power in the 1920s and the siting of freeways in the 1950s.

Lansing's prose is clear, straightforward and rarely given to flights of fancy or rhetorical flourishes. Exhaustively researched, well-organized and profusely illustrated, this volume is among the best ever to appear telling the Portland story.--William C. Hall

It's a startling moment when an author promotes her book by recommending its footnotes, but Jewel Lansing did just that at a book launching in City Hall in early November. After reading through her book, Portland, People, Politics and Power, 1851-2001, I want to assure the footnote-phobic that they should buy the book anyway. This is a very comprehensive book on the people and issues that shaped our city in. It's also an engaging read.

To date my standard reference works on Portland's development have been E. Kimbark MacColl's three books on some of the same topics. They are not out of date but unfortunately they are out of print. Access to city records has greatly improved since the 1970's when MacColl wrote his books and there is now a professionally organized records management system operated by the City Auditor.

Mrs. Lansing has taken full advantage of these public resources, of Dr. MacColl's original research papers (which he generously loaned), the works of many other professional historians and original materials to construct a comprehensive history of the development of our city government. There are three main areas of focus: the personalities, the issues, and the deals.

The format is fresh. Although the book is divided into sequential chapters covering 150 years of history, the flow of text is often interrupted with sidebars and boxes of additional information, an anecdote, or even a small chart or table. These enhance the main text, but can also be used to latch onto the primary narrative, if you are a reader who avoids beginning a book on page one and plowing purposefully through to the end. You can make a meal of the appetizers as it were, or they might lure you on to the main course.

While events are organized in chronological order, contents are equally tasty, for the author has an eye for quirky, intriguing morsels. For instance she describes the matter-of-fact approach of reform Mayor Allen G. Rushlight (from the Midway area of our neighborhood), a professional plumber, who was elected in 1911 for a two-year term:
"The mayor used his plumbing background to taxpayer advantage. When the city's "balky" crematory kept acting up (he) donned his old overalls and climbed inside to repair it..."
Or a comment made by pugnacious East-side developer Ben Holladay in 1869:
"Immediately after he arrived in town...he bought a large plot of land east of the river and declared that the city of the future would be on that side, that the grass would soon be growing on Front Street, and that he would make a rat-hole out of west-side Portland."
Reading a book about the city's history over a 150-year time period makes you realize that the same issues just keep coming back - where to get water, how to improve transportation, eliminate drug dealing and prostitution, pay for education and do it all without raising taxes. And we are never satisfied with our elected officials:
"Was there ever a city government managed in such a worthless and imbecile manner as this our city of Portland? We have not a continuous street that is passable with a well loaded vehicle. Current revenue is sixteen thousand dollars. What becomes of this money?" The Oregonian,1860

The book pulls no punches when it comes to contemporary issues, since Mrs. Lansing was an elected official herself between 1975-1986 (county, then city auditor) and reports as an insider on activities at City Hall under the direction of Mayors Frank Ivancie and Bud Clark and council members Schwab, Lindberg, Strachan, Jordan and Bogle. As the first city auditor to be a certified public accountant, she also describes the improvements she successfully implemented and the resistance to those changes in City Hall.

As a quick reference source, the book is invaluable for its lists in the back of the book of city officials, including dates served and in some instances place of birth, occupations, dates of birth/death. The text of the City Charter (1851) and locations of city halls (there were 18 others before our current building) are also included. Finally, there are those (foot) notes: They don't get in the way! Along with the index they are at the back of the book and constitute almost a fourth narrative that enhances the main text. As an auditor might phrase it, this is great value for the money ($30.00).

Treat yourself to an interesting read about your city, as well as a valuable reference book. Or buy it for someone on your holiday gift list. I think you will find it full of information, stories, insights and memories. It's a good read!