Reviewed by Christian Martin
David Hall (University of Washington Press)
Skilled diver David Hall is obsessed with the weird
cold-water ecosystems found off the northern Pacific Coast, with their
iridescent squid, ghostly salmon, glow-in-the-dark jellyfish, psychedelic
nudibranchs, curious seals and neon anemones. It is a great gift to all of us landlubbers
that Hall is also a photographer who, through state-of-the-art equipment, innovative
techniques and plenty of fearless gumption, captures this hidden world in
glorious images rich in color, detail and ecological context. It is bewildering
to learn what unseen life dwells just off of our local shores, and how little
we know about this mysterious and beautiful world.
Ana Maria Spagna (OSU Press)
Stehekin resident Ana Maria Spagna writes perceptively and
generously about the ties that bind communities: people to people, people to
place, self to story. Also serving as a memoir of her travels near and far,
Potluck celebrates the ordinary rituals that define our lives.
Edited by Thomas Lowe Fleischner (Trinity)
An environmental studies professor at Prescott College in
Arizona, Tom Fleischner’s local roots stretch back to summers spent working in
North Cascades National Park and the founding of North Cascades Institute.
Defining natural history as “a practice of intentional, focused attentiveness
and receptivity to the more-than-human world,” his vision of a zen-like study
of the natural world is fleshed out in this volume with essay and poetry contributions
from Jane Hirshfield, Robert Michael Pyle, Kathleen Dean Moore, Robert Aiken,
Scott Russell Sanders and others.
Lorraine McConaghy (Sasquatch)
A unique and entertaining way to explore our state’s
history, Lorraine McConaghy – historian at the Museum of History and Industry
in Seattle – assembles a wide-ranging selection of documents from public
archives to tell the century and a half story of Washington State. Presented in
colorful, sharp images, these documents range from the first telegraph to the
new Washington Territory from Abraham Lincoln, the Point Elliott Treaty and a
program from the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition through to FBI files on
D.B. Cooper, blueprints for the Kingdome, radio transcriptions during the
eruption of Mt. St. Helens, a handbill from the WTO “Battle in Seattle” and
poster for SubPop’s Lamefest featuring an unknown band named Nirvana. Even
ordinary artifacts like letters, wills, cartoons, menus, snapshots and advertisements
provide insight in to the extraordinary trajectory of the Evergreen State.
David Suzuki (Greystone)
In 2009, Vancouver-based broadcaster, author and elder
environmentalist David Suzuki gave a last lecture that synthesized his
perspectives and insights on the fate of the world: where we’ve come from and
where we’re going. This book expands on that talk, with a focus on exponential
population growth, the technological revolution and the ecological footprint of
a global economy. Luckily for us, Suzuki also presents his vision of a
sustainable future that is within our reach. A harrowing yet ultimately
inspirational presentation from a vital voice of sanity.
Derek Hayes (UC Press)
It is difficult to describe all of the riches that Derek
Hayes’ latest atlas project offers to the armchair historian. Its 200+ pages
brim with more than 500 maps, photos, newspaper clippings, pamphlets,
illustrations, advertisements and other historical ephemera, all succinctly
explained and consolidated in Hayes’ descriptive yet succinct text. The journey
begins with the earliest known maps of Washington and Oregon drawn up by
explorers like Quadra, Barkley, Quimper, Gray and Vancouver – scrawled yet
often elegant relics reflecting the limits of knowledge of the first Europeans
venturing in to this rugged landscape – and gains sophistication as
missionaries, railroad workers, miners, loggers and other settlers begin to
push in to the territory. Later pages are devoted to the development of the
interstate road system, national parks and forests, irrigation and hydropower,
floating bridges and atomic and aerospace industries. Open to any page of
Hayes’ bursting compendium and you’re likely to be engrossed by the diversity
of materials and depth of research.
John Scurlock (Wolverine)
Flying a small, yellow, home-built airplane out of Concrete,
John Scurlock explores the North Cascades in wind, weather and light that
inspires most people to be safe and cozied up at home. The results of his
extraordinary forays in to the inaccessible corners of this range are
photographs of a landscape seldom seen before, a wintery terra incognito of
terrifying beauty and austere grace. *Snow & Spire*, a collection of Scurlock’s
aerial photography and his first publication, is a culmination of several years
of determined labor and features stunning views of Baker, Shuksan, Forbidden,
Terror, the Picketts and beyond, plus essays by WWU geologist David Tucker and
mountaineering historian Lowell Skoog.
Thor Hanson (Basic Books)
Winner of the 2011 Northwest Booksellers Association book of
the year award and a Library Journal Top 10 Science Book, *Feathers* tells the
natural and cultural history of the feather – one of the most highly evolved
objects in nature. Hanson is a conservation biologist with experience in the
field studying everything from trees and songbirds in Costa Rica, bears in
Alasks and gorillas in Uganda, and he possesses the rare gift of translating
scientific concepts in to prose both captivating and poetic. Writing from his
home on San Juan Island, Hanson takes the reader back to the Chauvet Cave in
southern France, through Greek and Hindu mythology, up to recent discoveries
using DNA fingerprinting, all the while exploring the development and uses of
this evolutionary marvel.
Andrew Nikiforuk (Greystone)
Celebrated in Canada as one of their most engrossing
nonfiction books of the year, journalist Andrew Nikiforuk focuses his honed
investigative skills towards the tale of an insect “the size of a rice kernel”
that has killed more than 30 billion pine and spruce trees from Alaska and
northern British Columbia, down the Rocky Mountains range into Colorado and New
Mexico. There are many villains in this man-made tragedy -- climate change,
unsustainable logging practices, misguided science, a century of fire
suppression – and the author makes his best attempt to draw lessons and look
ahead into the unknown future of one of the world’s greatest natural heritage.
Hank Lentfer (Mountaineeers Books)
A finely-wrought memoir of a life lived in a remote town in
southeast Alaska, Hank Lentfer weaves together threads of conservation, natural
history, parenthood and family. Sandhill cranes, passing over the author’s home
every fall on their journey between California and Alaska, serve as the
inspiration for his quest to find hope in a world seemingly intent on crushing
all things beautiful and natural.
