Native Seattle, by Coll Thrush, won the History/Biography Washington State Book Award for 2008. Lionel H. Pries, Architect, Artist, Educator, by Jeffrey Karl Ochsner, was a finalist in the same category.

Native Seattle, which is in the Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books Series, received rave reviews and strong reader reactions in the year since it was published. So,
many congratulations to author Coll Thrush!

  

"Smilin' Joe" Miller learned early that political campaigns hadn't changed since the days of Babylon when politicians -- or, more correctly, kings and emperors -- stamped their visages on coins and invented lies about themselves. By capitalizing on this simple secret, he found that politics could be simplified to glorifying his candidate and denigrating the opposition. It just required keeping up with the latest technological developments and using them to advantage. There was nothing ennobling about this, but it paid well, or, as Bob Dole liked to say, there was no heavy lifting and it was all indoor work.

The Wicked Wine of Democracy is a frank account by a political operative and practicing lobbyist who in the early 1950s went from being a journalist in Seattle to working on the campaigns of such important political figures as Warren G. Magnuson, Henry "Scoop" Jackson, Frank Church, William Proxmire, and, finally, John F. Kennedy. He was so successful in managing the media for campaigns across the country that in 1957 the Washington Post labeled him "the Democrat's answer to Madison Avenue." After Kennedy's victory, Miller opened a lobbying office on Capitol Hill and took on clients as diverse as the United Steelworkers of America, the Western Forest Industries Association, and the Marine Engineers Beneficial Association. In this always revealing and often humorous memoir, Miller reports on the highlights and backroom conversations from political campaigns, labor negotiations, and lobbying deals to give an honest picture of how politics worked over his forty-year career in the nation's capital.

Joseph S. Miller is a retired lobbyist living in Washington, D.C. Miller wrote and edited for the Lewiston Morning Tribune, Boise Daily Statesman, Oregon Journal, and Seattle Post-Intelligencer before beginning his career as a media consultant for political campaigns and a lobbyist for a variety of unions and associations.

Join Joe to hear more about The Wicked Wine of Democracy:

Wednesday, October 1 at Politics and Prose, Washington, DC at 7 p.m.

Thursday, October 23 at Kane Hall on the UW campus with University Book Store at 7 p.m.

Thursday, October 30 at 23rd Avenue Books, Portland at 7 p.m.

 
Wednesday, November 12 at Auntie's Books, Spokane, at 7:30 p.m.

Carl Maxey was, in his own words, "a guy who started from scratch -- black scratch." He was sent, at age five, to the scandal-ridden Spokane Children's Home and then kicked out at age eleven with the only other "colored" orphan. Yet Maxey managed to make a national name for himself, first as an NCAA championship boxer at Gonzaga University, and then as eastern Washington's first prominent black lawyer and a renowned civil rights attorney who always fought for the underdog.

During the tumultuous civil rights and Vietnam War eras, Carl Maxey fought to break down color barriers in his hometown of Spokane and throughout the nation. As a defense lawyer, he made national headlines working on lurid murder cases and war-protest trials, including the notorious Seattle Seven trial. He even took his commitment to justice and antiwar causes to the political arena, running for the U.S. Senate against powerhouse senator Henry M. Jackson.

In Carl Maxey: A Fighting Life, Jim Kershner explores the sources of Maxey's passions as well as the price he ultimately paid for his struggles. The result is a moving portrait of a man called a "Type-A Gandhi" by the New York Times, whose own personal misfortune spurred his lifelong, tireless crusade against injustice.

Jim Kershner is a journalist for The Spokesman-Review in Spokane and staff historian at HistoryLink.org.

Thursday, October 9 at Village Books, Bellingham, at 7 p.m.

The Monterey coast, home to an acclaimed aquarium and the setting for John Steinbeck's classic novel Cannery Row, was also the stage for a historical junction of industry and tourism. Shaping the Shoreline looks at the ways in which Monterey has formed, and been formed by, the tension between labor and leisure.

Connie Y. Chiang examines Monterey's development from a seaside resort into a working-class fishing town and, finally, into a tourist attraction again. Through the subjects of work, recreation, and environment -- the intersections of which are applicable to communities across the United States and abroad -- she documents the struggles and contests over this magnificent coastal region. By tracing Monterey's shift from what was once the literal Cannery Row to an iconic hub that now houses an aquarium in which nature is replicated to attract tourists, the interactions of people with nature continues to change.

Drawing on histories of immigration, unionization, and the impact of national and international events, Chiang explores the reciprocal relationship between social and environmental change. By integrating topics such as race, ethnicity, and class into environmental history, Chiang illustrates the idea that work and play are not mutually exclusive endeavors.

Connie Y. Chiang is assistant professor of history and environmental studies at Bowdoin College.

Wesley Erks, itinerant machinist and adventurer, takes a hefty fee for smuggling a group of illegal Chinese immigrants ("yellowfish") from Vancouver, B.C., to San Francisco in the 1970s. Three are teenaged "Hong Kong boys," one of whom is dying from an earlier stab wound; the fourth is the son of a rich Chinese casino owner who wants to settle some debts with The Triad, a secret Chinese society. The story of the perilous and suspenseful journey of these five men, filled with colorful fictional and historical characters, is as memorable as the story of the West itself.

John Keeble, professor emeritus of creative writing at Eastern Washington University, is the author of two novels, including Broken Ground, Nocturnal America, a collection of short stories, and Out of the Channel, a book of nonfiction. His fiction and nonfiction are widely published in literary magazines, and he has won a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Washington State Governor's Writers Award.

For more information on the author go to: http://www.johnkeeble.net/books.htm

Join John:

Friday, November 7 at Auntie's Books, Spokane, at 7:30 p.m.

Saturday, November 8 at Elliott Bay Books at 7:30 p.m.

Tuesday, November 18 at Broadway Books, Portland, at 7:30 p.m.