Now available
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Fall/Winter
2009 catalog
In print or as a digital, interactive version
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Award winner
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Winner of the International Convention of Asia Scholars Book Prize
Artisans in Early Imperial China, by Anthony Barbieri-Low, was awarded the
2009 ICAS Book Prize.
The book has also won the following prizes:
2009 Levenson Book Prize (for book on pre-1900 China), sponsored by the Association for Asian Studies
2009 Charles Rufus Morey Book Award from College Art Association
2008 James Henry Breasted Award from the American Historical Association
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COMING UP IN OCTOBER
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Sky Train: Tibetan Women on the Edge of History
Through a lyrical narrative of her journey to Tibet in 2007, activist
Canyon Sam contemplates modern history from the perspective of Tibetan
women. Traveling on China's new "Sky Train," she celebrates Tibetan New
Year with the Lhasa family whom she'd befriended decades earlier and
concludes an oral-history project with women elders.
As she uncovers stories of Tibetan women's courage, resourcefulness, and
spiritual strength in the face of loss and hardship since the Chinese
occupation of Tibet in 1950, and observes the changes wrought by the
controversial new rail line in the futuristic "new Lhasa," Sam comes to
embrace her own capacity for letting go, for faith, and for acceptance.
Her glimpse of Tibet's past through the lens of the women - a visionary
educator, a freedom fighter, a gulag survivor, and a child bride -
affords her a unique perspective on the state of Tibetan culture today
- in Tibet, in exile, and in the widening Tibetan diaspora.
Tuesday, October 6 at 6 p.m. at San Francisco Public Library
Wednesday, October 7 at 7 p.m. at Copperfield's Sebastopol
Saturday, October 10 at noon at Litquake,San Francisco
Sunday, October 11 at noon and 3 p.m. at Wordstock, Portland
Tuesday, October 13 at 7:30 p.m. at Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle
Wednesday, October 14 at 7:30 p.m. at Ravenna Third Place Books, Seattle
Thursday, October 15 at 7:30 p.m. at Vancouver, BC Public Library
Saturday, October 17 at 7 p.m. at Village Books, Bellingham
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Join our list
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Greetings!
Welcome back!
While summer is certainly still in full swing outside, fall is inching ever closer and with it a wonderful new array of books and events happening across the country.
There is something for everyone coming up in the cooler months and, as always, if you have any questions please feel free to get in touch.
All the best,
Rachael
remann@u.washington.edu
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Joann Green Byrd
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 Calamity:
The Heppner Flood of 1903
June 14, 1903, was a typical, hot Sunday in Heppner, a small farm town
in northeastern Oregon. People went to church, ate dinner, and relaxed
with family and friends. But late that afternoon, calamity struck when
a violent thunderstorm brought heavy rain and hail to the mountains and
bare hills south of town. When the fierce downpour reached Heppner,
people gathered their children and hurried inside. Most everyone closed
their doors and windows against the racket.
The thunder and
pounding hail masked the sound of a roaring, two-story wall of water raging toward town. Within
an hour, one of every five people in the prosperous town of 1,300 would
lose their lives as the floodwaters carried away
nearly everything in its path. The center of town was devastated.
Enormous drifts of debris, tangled around bodies, snaked down the
valley. The telegraph was down, the railroads were out, and the mayor
was in Portland.
Stunned survivors bent immediately to the
dreadful tasks of searching for loved ones and carrying bodies to a
makeshift morgue in the bank. By the next afternoon, thousands of
individuals and communities had rushed to the town's aid and this outpouring
of generosity enabled the self-reliant citizens of Heppner to
undertake the town's recovery.
In Calamity, Joann Green Byrd, a
native of eastern Oregon, carefully documents this poignant story,
illustrating that even the smallest acts have consequences - good or
bad. She draws on a wealth of primary sources, including a moving
collection of photographs, to paint a rare picture of how a small town
in the West coped with disaster at the turn of the twentieth century.
Joann
Green Byrd is a journalist who has worked for a number of
newspapers, including the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the East Oregonian, and the
Washington Post.
Join Joann on
Tuesday, September 8, at 7 p.m. at Umatilla Historical Society, Pendleton, OR
Thursday, September 10, at 7:30 p.m. at Powell's Books, Portland, OR
Thursday, September 17, at 7 p.m. at Fremont Place Books, Seattle
Friday, September 25 at 7 p.m. at Fishtrap, with The Bookloft, Enterprise, OR
Saturday, September 26 at 1 p.m. at Sunflower Books, LaGrande, OR
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Nicolette Bromberg
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 Picturing the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition: The Photographs of Frank H. Nowell
For those who experienced it, the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition was a
time of wonder in a "citadel set in stars" - a grand world's fair that
transformed the summer of 1909 in Seattle into a whirl of excitement
and pleasure. On what would become the University of Washington campus,
for a brief moment a huge city emerged. At noon on June 1, amidst the
blasting of horns and whistles, confetti filled the air and the gates
were opened to a pent-up crowd of about 80,000 fairgoers. At the end of
the evening on October 16, the fair was over and the magical city
became a memory for its 3.7 million visitors.
For those who
couldn't make the trip to see the exhibits and for the rest of us
today, the best record of the event was made by Frank H. Nowell,
official photographer for the exposition. He documented the
construction of the city, its landscaping, the people who built it, and
the people who visited it, as well as the buildings that housed
displays from dozens of foreign countries. He used a large view camera
and 8 x 10 glass-plate negatives to create several thousand
photographs. For this book, Nicolette Bromberg has chosen the best and
most representative. Her essay illuminates both the man and the fair,
providing perspective to a history of the West that connects us to a
world-expanding event a hundred years ago, and also contains Nowell's
photographs of Alaska during the gold rush, relating how an Alaskan
photographer became the official A-Y-P photographer.
For the
100th anniversary of the exposition, John Stamets organized and led
University of Washington students in a project to rephotograph the
site. This book includes an essay by Stamets describing the challenges,
delights, and problems of the project, along with thirty rephotographs
that imagine the fabulously spectacular ghost city on the campus.
Nicolette
Bromberg is visual materials curator in Special Collections at the
University of Washington Libraries in Seattle. John Stamets is a
lecturer in photography in the Department of Architecture, University
of Washington.
Join Nicolette on
Monday, September 21, at 7 p.m. at University Book Store, Seattle |
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Paula Becker and Alan Stein
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 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, Washington's First World's Fair
This richly illustrated and well-researched volume chronicles the
Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, held in Seattle in 1909. The 3.7
million visitors to the fair during its four-month run, on what was to
become the University of Washington campus, beheld a cornucopia of
exhibits housed in an astonishing collection of buildings and enjoyed
the carnival-like - and sometimes controversial - entertainments of the
Pay Streak midway. Starting with the Klondike Gold Rush in 1897,
authors Alan J. Stein and Paula Becker recount in detail the history of
the fair that brought Seattle and Washington into the national
spotlight.
The A-Y-P Exposition was a major community effort for
a state that was only twenty years old. It was the first world's fair
to make a profit, it provided a platform for advocates of woman
suffrage, and it set the general plan for the University of Washington
campus that endures to this day.
Alan J. Stein is a
HistoryLink.org staff historian and award-winning author of Safe
Passage: The Birth of Washington State Ferries; Bellevue Timeline; and
The Olympic: The Story of Seattle's Landmark Hotel. Paula Becker is a
staff historian for HistoryLink.org and author of the popular "Park
Hopping" column for ParentMap magazine.
Join Paula and Alan on
Monday, September 14 at 7 p.m. at University Book Store, Seattle
Thursday, September 17, at 7:30 p.m. at Eagle Harbor Books, Bainbridge Island
Wednesday, September 30, at 7 p.m. at Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park
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Charles LeWarne
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 The Love Israel Family:
Urban Commune, Rural Commune
In 1968, a time of turbulence and countercultural movements, a one-time
television salesman named Paul Erdmann changed his name to Love Israel
and started a controversial religious commune in Seattle's middle-class
Queen Anne Hill neighborhood. He quickly gathered a following and they
too adopted the Israel surname, along with biblical or virtuous first
names such as Honesty, Courage, and Strength. The burgeoning Love
Israel Family lived a communal lifestyle centered on meditation and the
philosophy that all persons were one and life was eternal. They
flourished for more than a decade, owning houses and operating
businesses on the Hill, although rumors of drug use, control of
members, and unconventional sexual arrangements dogged them.
By
1984, perceptions among many followers that some Family members -
especially Love Israel himself - had become more equal than others led
to a bitter breakup in which two-thirds of the members defected. The
remaining faithful, about a hundred strong, resettled on a ranch the
Family retained near the town of Arlington, Washington, north of
Seattle. There they recouped and adapted, with apparent social and
economic success, for two more decades.
In The Love Israel Family, Charles LeWarne tells the compelling story of this group of
idealistic seekers whose quest for a communal life grounded in love,
service, and obedience to a charismatic leader foundered when that
leader's power distanced him from his followers. LeWarne followed the
Family for years, attending its celebrations and interviewing the
faithful and the disaffected alike. He tells the Family's story with
both sympathy and balance, describing daily life in the urban and later
the rural communes and explaining the Family's deeply felt spiritual
beliefs. The Love Israel Family is an important chapter in the history
of communal experiments in the United States.
Charles LeWarne
is the author of Utopias on Puget Sound, 1885-1915 and Washington State, a text used in many regional school districts. He is coauthor of
Washington: A Centennial History.
Join Charles on
Monday, September 21, at 7 p.m. at Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park
Friday, September 25, at 7:30 p.m. at Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle
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Tony Angell
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 Puget Sound Through an Artist's Eye
Puget Sound's rich abundance of life - from mammals to birds - can be
attributed to the fact that the region is far more than just a body of
water. Edged by an extraordinary range of habitats, this region is
visited and occupied year-round by species that are finely tuned to
exploit the resources here that are necessary for their survival. Birds
are among the most obvious occupants of these communities, and
witnessing their dynamic lives has been a source of inspiration for
artist and naturalist Tony Angell.
For nearly fifty years Angell
has used Puget Sound's natural diversity as his artist's palette. In this book, he describes the living systems within the Sound and shares
his observations and encounters with the species that make up the
complex communities of the Sound's rivers, tidal flats, islands, and
beaches: the fledging flight of a young peregrine, an otter playfully
herding a small red rockfish, the grasp of a curious octopus.
Angell
goes on to explain the methods he uses in his art. The shapes,
movements, patterns, and even temperatures and smells that he
experiences in the field are all brought to bear on his work. His
drawings bring clarity to his visual and emotional memories, and his
sculptures allow him to approach a memory from many directions and
retain that memory in his hands. In all of his work, he lets the
passion and excitement of his discoveries drive his artistic expression.
Angell
augments his descriptions of the wildlife of the Puget Sound region and of
his working methods with two appendices listing guides and references
to this and other regions by other artists and naturalists. These
resources not only put wildlife viewers in touch with the times and
places to view particular species but also speak to the patience and
willingness to be delighted that are necessary to increasing the
understanding of our wild neighbors.
Tony Angell is an illustrator, sculptor, and author.
Join Tony on
Tuesday, September 22, at 7 p.m. at Traditions Cafe, Olympia
Thursday, September 24 at 7 p.m. at IslandWood, Bainbridge Island
Tuesday, September 29 at 7 p.m. at Bellingham Public Library
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| Victoria Tupper Kirby |
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 Allen Tupper True
This first definitive biography of the Colorado artist Allen Tupper True (1881-1955) relies on letters, diaries, and contemporary news
accounts as well as family history to describe his artistic evolution
from illustrator to easel painter to muralist. The lavish illustrations
include most of True's murals (both extant and destroyed), a selection
of his major easel paintings, as well as some of his sketches and
cartoons and Indian-inspired designs.
Jere True was the eldest daughter of Allen Tupper True.
She was a reporter for the Denver Post and publicity director for
Aspen, Colorado. Victoria Tupper True, Allen True's granddaughter,
worked as a public relations consultant in San Francisco for more than
25 years.
Join Victoria on
Wednesday, September 30 at 7:30 p.m. at Tattered Cover Bookstore, Denver, CO
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